


Beyond the Horizon

by annaregina



Series: Into the Unknown [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blood, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dark Magic, Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Familicide, Fire Powers, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Choking (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Frozen/ATLA style magic, Ice Powers, Implied/Referenced Torture, Infanticide, M/M, Main characters are not pregnant, Oppressive regimes, Padmé is pregnant/has children, Part Two, Swordfighting, War, again I stole the vibes, and it's mentioned, happy ending!, strap in lads
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25113538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaregina/pseuds/annaregina
Summary: Snoke is dead. Kylo Ren is gone. Alderaan stands once more.But the sinister Emperor Palpatine still rules from the heart of Jakku, his tendrils of power sniffing at the borders, eager for more and eager to end the magic between Rey and Ben that could destroy him.The group must journey once again, leaving the safety of Alderaan behind, to find a way to stop Palpatine and restore balance to the continent before his dark magic leeches the life from it and all hope of freedom is lost forever.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux & Rey, Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey & Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Into the Unknown [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788868
Comments: 17
Kudos: 25





	1. Smoother Than A Storm

The blade glints in the February sun, a flash of light sliding down the sharpened edge as Rey whirls it round, spinning on her toes to parry an imaginary blow. Her second hand is thrown out to maintain balance, a searing spray of fire exploding from her palm as she moves so her body protected on all sides by steel and flames.

The straw dummy is sliced clean in half with the force of the swing, leaving only the now decapitated post and Rey’s wicked grin as she rights herself, drawing her centre of gravity in and down as she crouches, turning slowly to inspect the courtyard and visualise her next attacker.

Alone in the square, Rey wipes her forehead and flicks the sweat away easily; she’s been working hard enough to get even her temperature up, and she’s pleased. But she’s not done yet.

One of the horses in the stables along the east wall shifts. She imagines it’s someone crouching in wait and she jumps forwards, pushing a fireball out in front of her and following it up with a savage slice of her blade, the golden sheen of the coated metal reflecting and mirroring the magic flowing out of her.

Sinking into herself, Rey flows through the motions of her training, moving from pose to pose, lunging forwards and ducking under an invisible enemy to hack at their legs before rolling, sending punches of embers into the cobblestones under her shoulder as she pushes up. Lost in the process as she is, she doesn’t even notice the animals stir restlessly, their ears tilting and the hay strewn on the floor moving with an unseen wind.

Rey picks up on the disturbance almost too late, twisting her torso around frantically and bringing her sword up across her chest to meet the crimson blade edge on. The two pieces of forged steel vibrate with the power of the collision, the impact ringing in Rey’s ears as she follows the lines of the sword up to the owner and his dear, familiar face.

Ben grins at her from where he’s stood, his posture bent with the angle of his strike. “You’re getting there, but you’re still not as good as me, sweetheart.”

The panic melts away to pure joy as she steps back to relieve the pressure on their weapons and then drops hers. Ben sheathes his sword sensibly as always before she throws her arms around his neck, jumping right off the floor with their height difference. He catches her easily, revelling in the feel of her body lithe and light against his. He’s been gone since the coronation and their wedding afterwards, as much as he’d tried to delay it, and he’s missed her _endlessly_.

To be fair, he hadn’t really had a choice about leaving: Leia had written to all the northern territories and explained what Snoke had forced Ben to do and so he and Hux and Poe had been gone ever since making it up to them and organising aid and reparations. It had been boring and unrewarding and he’d missed Rey every single day. Surprising her like this has required damping down their bond for a week as he approached Alderaan but it’s worth every second of maintaining tight control as he kisses her fiercely now, tightening his grip around her waist.

“I missed you,” she breathes, running a hand through his hair, shaggy and long after his travels. She seems to like it like this.

“I missed you too,” Ben grins, kissing her nose and watching it wrinkle up adorably in response. He only deepens the kiss even as he sets her back down on the stones, his hand drifting round to tangle in her unbraided hair. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Someone clears their throat from the corner of the courtyard and Ben groans in irritation. Rey pulls back from him, her cheeks flushed red from both exertion and embarrassment.

“Lovely to see you too, Rey,” Hux says, smirking. His arms are folded across his chest and his dark red hair is swept across his forehead, making him look far more casual than Rey is used to. Even now everything has changed in Alderaan, Hux still wears his militariy uniform and slicks his hair back every morning; they really must’ve only just got off their horses if he looks this ruffled.

“Don’t mind us, it’s not like we’ve been gone the entire time too,” Poe continues, bringing his hand up to his forehead and swooning. “I feel so abandoned! Forgotten! Ignored, even!”

“Awh, does Poe want a kiss too?” Ben croons, tightening his arm around Rey’s waist as she beams at her friends. “Do you feel left out?”

“You have your own man to make out with,” Rey whines, still pink, “Go and find Finn and leave me be.”

Poe perks up immediately at this realisation and Hux snorts loudly as the Rebellion fighter vanishes with alarming swiftness.

“We should probably head inside,” Ben admits, nodding to Hux as he guides Rey over with him, stealing another quick kiss anyway. “Mum wanted to see us as soon as we got back, she said she had an update on the... letter situation.”

Rey can practically see the storm clouds rolling through his mind, stoking the anger that’s simmered inside him ever since the Emperor’s letter several weeks ago. It’s the first time she’s seen him since he was told about it – he was already in Takodana in discussions with Maz Kanata when the raven addressed to him arrived at the castle – and she’s impressed with his restraint around her. She can feel he’s reigning it in for her sake.

“Before you even go there,” she warns, “I’m fine. I’m safe. Nothing has happened.”

The Emperor had apparently been unimpressed to hear to the news of Snoke’s defeat and Leia and Han’s return to the throne of Alderaan. He had been even more unimpressed by the Solo’s refusal to return Rey to him. As a citizen of Jakku, not Alderaan, she was under his command. And that meant, as an escaped criminal, they should turn her over to his men and forget all about her.

Ben had apparently nearly speared the messenger boy with a dagger-sharp icicle before Hux had reminded him that the kid wasn’t responsible for the Emperor’s audacity.

She’s barely been able to go anywhere by herself ever since, despite the fact that she is more than capable of defending herself with magic, even if her mastery of the sword is a while off yet. This chance to train has been the first real alone time in a while and while it’s been cut short, she’s glad that Ben, Hux and Poe have returned: the castle has been quiet with just her, Rose and Finn bouncing around inside its walls.

“Do you think Poe has remembered Leia’s orders?” Hux asks as he falls into step next to Ben and Rey. He sounds almost fond of the other man, which has clearly been a development Rey has missed while they were away. There had been several big arguments between them in the few days either side of the coronation and the wedding until Leia put her foot down and made them both go with Ben in order to force them into a semblance of a friendship. As usual, Leia has been proven right.

“He won’t have, but Finn will,” Rey laughs, leaning her head against Ben’s broad side as they walk, revelling in his closeness. The bond, and their brief conversations through it have kept her sane while he’s been gone, but it’s no replacement for the real thing.

“True,” Hux grins, fixing his hair in the glass as they head into the main hallway of the castle and make their way up to Leia’s study.

* * *

It doesn’t take them long to reach it. Ben knocks and enters, followed closely by Rey and then Hux, to find Rose, Leia and Han already there, Han leaning back in the desk chair while Leia stands next to him, her arm resting on her husband’s sloped shoulder.

Finn and Poe are nowhere to be seen, and Rey rolls her eyes at the emerging sound of hurried steps up the staircase outside. Their lateness is inevitably Poe’s fault. The door bursts open and the two men fall into the room.

“Now you’re all here,” Han teases, his voice a slow drawl as Finn pants an apology and Poe shuts the door firmly behind them, leaning against the worn wood to catch his breath.

Poe winces. “Sorry, Your Highnesses, sorry, it’s-“

“Your fault,” everyone choruses and Finn smacks his hand against his forehead even as Poe protests weakly.

Leia rolls her eyes and tuts under her breath but the corners of her mouth are pulled up into a smile. “Never mind. You’re here now. It’s good to see you all again.”

Rey catches Hux grinning across at Rose, who is curled up in a cosy looking armchair by the window and makes a mental note to ask Ben about _that_ later.

“I’m sure you all know all the details of Palpatine’s latest insane request?” Han grumbles, raising one eyebrow at the three men who have been away. They nod and Ben’s brow furrows at the reminder.

“Well we received another one – just now,” Leia adds hastily before Ben can yell about not being informed. “Not half an hour ago. Figured we might as well wait until you were all here.” She leans forwards and smooths out the parchment resting on the oak desk, sighing quietly. “It’s even ruder, frankly.”

“What’s he saying this time?” Rey asks, nervous. After all, it’s her the letter will be about.

Leia looks them all in the eye on by one, her expression deadly serious. “That if we continue to keep you here, he will have no choice but to declare war on Alderaan. And anyone who harbours you.”

There’s a moment of stunned silence before the room erupts into angry noise, all her friends’ voices overlapping as they yell and argue and curse. It’s enough to make Rey wince, even though she feels just the same, but Leia raises one thin hand and their protests die out immediately, everyone watching her.

“Obviously, we are not going to throw you across the border to the vultures, Rey,” Leia continues, her voice strong. “So that leaves us with two choices.”

“Which one involves killing him slowly?” Ben says, his voice cold and unflinching. Rey knows he is remembering everything that has happened to her at the hands of this man. She’s remembering it all too.

“Both of them,” Han replies, shrugging. “Our two choices are... let him come here, or take the fight to him. We’ve left him alive for too long already.”

“So we declare war on _him_?” Rose asks as she pushes herself out of the armchair and paces the room, nervous.

“Precisely,” Leia sighs.

“It should’ve happened years ago,” Finn says, his voice suddenly passionate but scared. “He’s done so many things – so many awful things.”

Rey recalls the Finn from Jakku the first time she met him. A prison guard who didn’t want to be there, who chose to do the right thing and fled with the Rebellion. She smiles at him quickly. He only swallows as he stares back at her.

Leia looks down at her hands and wrings them together. “What do you think I have spent my whole life trying, Finn?” she whispers, her eyes suddenly tired with the weight of years of fighting.

“My mother rallied the Rebellion together when Palpatine first rose to power,” Ben explains, the pride evident in his voice. “She has spent years helping the people in the south, trying to stop him expanding his empire.”

“And yet, I failed,” Leia says with another sigh. Han leans over and takes her hand in his, squeezing it quickly.

“You never failed, sweetheart. He’s just... Palpatine,” Han mutters, knowing that is only a small consolation if it’s even that.

“What has this got to do with Rey and the letter?” Hux asks, not losing sight of the reason they were called here. “Palpatine deserves the most painful death known to man, we already knew that.”

“Because I have realised,” Leia says, lifting her chin to look at each of the gathered friends in turn. “That it is time to start the fight again. I was forced to retreat – Alderaan needed me, I was pregnant, I was exhausted and we had lost the south – but the war was never really over. We are not declaring war against him, we simply have to _continue_ the war against him.”

“But,” Han interjects before his son or anyone else can speak, “There is a complication.”

“More complicated that fighting and killing a man who controls the entire southern half of the world?” Rey mutters, trying and failing not to sound already exhausted at the thought of what is to come.

“Unfortunately, kid,” Han grimaces.

“The thing is, Ben, I didn’t fight Palpatine as he rose to power,” Leia explains, looking and sounding old. It’s the first time Rey has ever really noticed it. “He was _already_ in power. And he was _already_ in power when my mother was queen of Naboo. He was already old then, if her journals are anything to go by. And he will continue to be in power for who knows how long.”

“What do you mean?” Poe frowns, “He’s old, sure, but is he really _that_ ancient?”

“Yes,” Han grunts, “I’ve seen the shrivelled prune myself, unfortunately. He really is that ancient.”

“Fuck,” Ben says, his eyes widening.

Rey and the others look at him, confused.

“Dark magic,” he says at the same time as his mother, their eyes both reflecting the same sadness and pain.

All at once, they all start talking again, the confusion and horror evident in their voices. Leia looks to Han, who stands and pulls a heavy, leather bound book from one of the desk drawers, placing it on the top with surprising care for a man who has never cared for academia.

They go quiet once more, the aura of the tome leaking into the air and silencing them. It is old, as old as the castle at least.

“This is one of the most precious objects in this whole country,” Leia explains, running her fingers over the embossed title, the words in a language Rey doesn’t recognise. “It’s how we figured out the precious little we knew about Ben’s powers and the dyad bond before you came along, Rey.”

She steps closer, pulled towards it magnetically. Ben follows her like a ghost, right at her shoulder.

Leia opens it to the marked page and takes a deep breath. “It only touches on it, but I remember hating the passage, not because I was fearful of the magic – not at first, maybe – but because of what came after it.”

Rose joins Rey and links arms with her, squeezing tightly. Rey’s grateful for the physical grounding as she feels the others all gather round the table too, peering at the fluid strokes of ink like they can decipher them.

“The dyad is only one manifestation of magic in this world,” Leia explains slowly.

Rey blinks. She has always assumed that her and Ben were it, the beginning middle and end of magic. That there would never be anyone like them in their lifetime at least.

“I recently reread this passage and my suspicions were confirmed. Dyads are born to correct the balance in the world, and we all assumed that imbalance was... mine and Han’s mistakes.” Leia watches Ben with a soft, guilty expression. “But now I’m not so sure.”

Ben stiffens next to Rey and she brushes his arm softly, picking up on the undercurrent of his thoughts and widening her eyes. “You think Palpatine is the imbalance.”

“I know he is,” Leia whispers, “He has always been the blight on this world. But now I understand why.”

“Leia, I don’t understand, what does this creepy book tell us that we don’t already know?” Poe frowns, not even relaxing as Finn takes his hand in an attempt t comfort his partner.

She shudders. “An imbalance isn’t just a series of mistakes, or some misplaced parenting techniques. An imbalance is a magical thing, a build-up of _dark magic_.”

“Palpatine has been using dark magic, presumably, to keep himself alive except we don’t know what sort or what he’s doing or, crucially, how to stop him,” Han finishes, rubbing Leia’s back tenderly. He meets his son’s eye. “And in order to win any war, we are going to have to figure out how to kill the bastard first.”

“What else does the book say?” Finn asks, sounding half scared to find out.

Leia shakes her head. “Nothing else. This is a very varied book, and this section is the only section on this sort of thing. Most of it is undecipherable or completely irrelevant, detailing magic that this world hasn’t seen in a millennia. Useless to us, in other words.”

Poe curses and rakes a hand through his hair. Ben is frozen next to Rey, staring in horror at the book in front of his parents.

“So, he’s basically immortal?” Hux mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Incredible. Of course he is, the bastard.”

“We need more information,” Leia says quietly, spreading her hands out in a pleading, desperate gesture. “And I don’t know where to look.”

Rose looks up from the floor, her face pale under her dark fringe. “I do.”

They all turn to look at her, eyes wide.

“The Archive,” she says softly, her eyes flashing with suppressed rage. “In Hays.”

Leia’s expression clears as she catches on, nodding firmly. “Yes! Clever – I like you even more than I already did, sweetheart.”

“What is the Archive?” Rey asks, chewing on her nails, a bad habit she’s never managed to break. Ben normally gently taps her hands away from her mouth but he is also too preoccupied staring at Rose, trying to reel through all the knowledge in his head to work out what she’s on about.

“The Archive is a collection of all the knowledge in Hays, built into the mountains on the border. It’s by the capital, Orwan, but in the great valley beyond it and not in the city itself. When the Empire invaded, they blew up the entrances. All the knowledge was trapped inside, along with the Archivists who worked there,” Rose explains, her eyes damp with tears. “All our country’s research and stories, all our history gone, just like that. The Archivists themselves, too, they knew everything about _everything_.”

She steels herself and wipes her eyes furiously. “But the Archive is still there, it’s just buried under the stone. Only the entrances were destroyed. The Empire couldn’t blow it all up because they needed the mountain intact to mine the minerals below it. If anywhere has the information we need, it will be the Archive.”

“So we need to go there right away,” Poe says loudly, slamming his hands on the desk. “We have to find out how to defeat Palpatine if we stand a chance of winning the war.”

Rey nods, going over it all in her head slowly. “We go to the Archive, we find the information we need and then me and Ben kill Palpatine?”

“We always were going to kill him,” Ben says, clenching his fists at his sides. “This is just another reason. And a better chance.”

“How long do we have before the Empire invade Alderaan?” Hux asks, ever the strategist.

“Who knows,” Leia grumbles, “We probably have some time still, we’ve only just received this threat, so give it a week or two before he realises we aren’t returning Rey – more if we promise him her and then don’t deliver, obviously – and then a few more for him to send an official declaration of war. He’s old fashioned, he’ll probably bother with that still.”

“And then marching from Jakku to here...” Han muses, “You know all too well how long that ride is, and that’s with just a small group, not the full force of Jakku and the Empire’s army. We have time.”

“Will the other northern countries stand with us against Palpatine?” Poe demands, looking around the room, his eyes burning.

“Unfortunately, we have just decimated most of them personally,” Hux says, giving Ben a look that he ignores firmly. Rey wants to giggle.

“That can be fixed. You’ve already been doing work to repair that,” Leia waves him off, “And they will all understand that Palpatine is a bigger problem than a misunderstanding. We’ve all been preparing for the Empire’s invasion since Hays fell and Palpatine had the whole south under his thumb.”

“So we’re leaving again?” Rey demands. This is all she needs to know. She knew this would happen eventually – her and Ben swore they’d ride to kill Palpatine whatever happened – but she wants to prepare herself to leave the life she’s been carving out for herself here.

“We are,” Ben says gently, nodding to his mother who looks regal as ever as she closes the old book and rallies herself.

“We will stay here and coordinate a counter-attack with the other northern countries. Maz will help too, I’m sure. And then we’ll all march south to confront that monster and his army once and for all. Ben and Rey will travel to Hays, find the Archive and learn what they need to do in order to defeat Emperor Palpatine,” Leia commands.

“Woah, wait, Ben and Rey will?” Poe laughs, “Not a chance.”

“It’s me and Ben who will have to kill him,” Rey frowns, “Why wouldn’t we go?”

“No, you idiot,” Rose laughs, shaking her head. “Poe means you won’t be going alone.”

“Well of course we won’t, we have each other,” Ben snorts.

Hux rolls his eyes. “You two are so immensely powerful and yet so immensely stupid at the same time that it blows my mind. We’re all coming with you.”

Ben and Rey blink, staring at their friends blankly.

“You didn’t really think you two can go off adventuring without us?” Poe grins. “All four of us are coming along for the ride. If there’s danger I’m in.”

Leia exchanges a look with Han, who chuckles, knowing exactly who this reminds her of. It’s a miracle she doesn’t call Poe Han’s name all day every day.

Rey grins slightly, her shoulders dropping in relief. “You are?”

“Honestly,” Finn scoffs, folding his arms across his chest and shrugging. “It’s like you don’t know us at all!”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Fine. You can come.”

“We weren’t asking permission,” Rose says stubbornly, looking around at her friends as they come to terms with their ridiculous, far-fetched plan to topple an empire. “And we should leave as soon as we can. It’s a long way home.”


	2. Love Bites So Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check tags, they've been updated x

It takes the six of them two more days to gather all the things they need: tents, food, disguises, weapons, anything else Poe can think of. Rey is reunited with Artoo much to her delight and Ben never leaves her side, as eager as he is for some alone time before they spend the next however long constantly with their friends.

They find some time to sneak off, but it doesn’t last very long before Hux interrupts them to let them know that Rose has found an old map of Hays in the library and a very disgruntled _why did I need to know this, Hux, can’t you see we are busy_ is heard echoing through the upper floors of the castle making Rose, who is hidden around the corner, giggle loud enough for Rey to hear her and laugh too despite the awkward situation.

But for all Ben’s grumbling, he knows they do have to move this fast. His father was most likely being generous about how much time they had before Palpatine realises they have no intention of handing Rey over, and the second he does they will have to be on their guard. He suspects, and he knows Rey agrees, that Palpatine will do all he can to kill one or both of them the second they leave the safety of Aldera City.

The Emperor isn’t stupid – he must know that they will never willingly give Rey up to him – and he will have planned accordingly. Ben hasn’t stopped worrying about it since.

When they’re finally ready, the group gather in the courtyard Rey has been training in for the last month, each standing next to their horses while Rose soothes the seventh horse who is carrying the rest of their things. It’s a much larger amount of things than Rey has been expecting, but to Ben it still doesn’t seem like nearly enough stuff to last them the whole journey to Hays.

“Are we all good to go?” Poe says confidently, rocking back on his heels and grinning round at them.

Ben tugs teasingly on the end of Rey’s plaited hair, earning himself a brilliant smile as she kisses Artoo’s nose and hops up onto the horse’s back. “I think that’s a yes from Rey.”

The others all swing themselves into their saddles too, leaving Ben standing on the cobbles. He turns to where his parents are waiting on the steps of the courtyard, dressed for their day of meetings and beginning preparations for their attack. His mother will be back at the head of a war council after decades away and he knows she wishes she wasn’t. He glances up at Rey who nods to him and smiles.

Leaving the others to get settled and chat momentarily, Ben slips over to Leia and Han, his face serious.

“I didn’t think I’d be leaving you again so soon,” he admits as he reaches them, towering over them both. He’s dressed for riding but his clothes are finely made – and still dark, as much as Leia has begged him to switch it up. “I... I’ll miss you.”

He hasn’t spoken like this with his parents in a long time, even after their recent reconciliation, and he swallows hard to try and move the lump in his throat. It doesn’t work.

Leia opens her mouth as if to say something and then slowly closes it again. Instead, she steps forwards and wraps her arms tightly around her son. Ben sinks into the embrace, relieved, bending over to engulf her in his arms, feeling his father join in too with a characteristic grumble.

“You keep yourself safe, do you hear me, kid?” Han whispers, patting the back of Ben’s head gently. “And Rey. All of them, for that matter.”

“I’m sure Poe resents the implication that he cannot look after himself,” Ben laughs dryly.

“He can’t,” Leia replies, rolling her eyes as she reluctantly pulls away, brushing Ben’s cheek as she smiles. “We all know he can’t.”

Han snorts and throws his arm across his wife’s shoulders in a movement more casual than his facial expression suggests it is. He’s back to his usual persona, even if the lines around his eyes are drawn tight with worry. Ben notices how old they both look and it makes him want to fold back into their embrace and never leave.

“Finish what I started,” Leia says firmly, nodding to her son as he straightens up.

“I will,” Ben promises.

* * *

As they leave the city behind, Rey settles into her saddle and prepares for another long journey. Their horseback ride into Alderaan at Winter Solstice had been gruelling, her body exhausted and weak after escaping and running from the Empire’s men – and Snoke’s; this one should be easier, if only because she’s well fed, well trained and travelling with her friends. Even if the actual mission is _far_ more daunting.

“How far should we try and make it tonight?” Poe checks, looking to Rose for guidance. They all know the area, having travelled through it and close to Hays several months ago, but Rose is obviously the expert and they’ve all collectively agreed to defer to her knowledge.

She shrugs. “It depends how hard we want to ride. We could do it in ten days or so, but the horses might not like us. Ben?”

Ben looks up from his lap, startled by the use of his actual name. Rey’s friends have taken some time to get used to calling him Ben and not Kylo and hearing it from them now is jarring for him too.

“We should probably get there as fast as we can, we need time in The Archive in case it takes forever to find what we need,” he sighs.

“Then we need to reach the border tonight,” Rose says, pulling a face as she grabs her water flask and takes a gulp. “Which could be fun going uphill.”

“Could you not undo the whole ‘ending winter’ thing?” Poe whines, wiping his forehead. The sun is hot overhead and they’re climbing higher now, the tree cover dense with leaves but doing nothing to cool them down despite the dappled shade it casts onto the undergrowth.

“Funnily enough, Poe,” Rey says dryly, taking a sip of her own water, “No.”

He grumbles half-heartedly to himself. “What is the use in world-changing magical powers if you can’t control the weather? You two are useless!”

“Careful, Dameron, or you’re going to get a bucket of snow over your head,” Ben warns from his horse at the edge of the group, leaning forwards around Rey to give Poe a look.

“Ben, that’s precisely what he wants,” Finn guffaws, “Don’t give in, resist!”

Hux snorts as Ben realises Poe’s plan and glares across the party towards Poe who looks exceedingly smug even if his plan has been foiled.

Rey’s eyes are bright and her laughter as bubbly as the rushing stream they navigate the horses across to continue following the path up and south. She’s with her friends and the end of their trip is far enough away that she can forget about it for now and focus on the fact that she is having _fun_. This could easily be a day hike into the mountains on a normal spring day for a picnic and so she focuses on that carefree feeling, the exhilarating rush of being out in the green landscapes of Alderaan, and not on their destination.

* * *

Ben, it seems, by the time they have set up camp for the night on a plateau just on the southern side of the ridge summit, cannot focus on the carefree feeling. Rey struggles to cover her giggles as he stares at their thin sleeping mats with abject horror.

“What are these?” he whispers to her, trying to keep his voice low enough that the others cannot hear him.

“What do you mean?” Rey grins, knowing _exactly_ what he means but wanting to tease him. She remembers their shared dreams, the cot beds he’s used to while on the move – this is nothing like he’s used to. She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him quickly. “They’re our beds!”

“They aren’t beds,” he hisses, eyes wide. “That is... the floor, Rey!”

“What did you think we were bringing with us?” she laughs, unable to hide her amusement now. “The extra horse was hardly going to be carrying six camping beds, was it?”

“I don’t know!”

“Oh bless you,” she snorts, her laughter growing louder as the confusion on his face only deepens. “Last time you had a bed because you were the king, and you were marching slowly. There was enough time to do that sort of thing.”

“You mean... you slept like this the whole way from Jakku?” Ben chokes. “Did your back not hurt?!”

“You’re such an old man,” she says gleefully, letting go of him to plonk herself down on the foamy mat and the soft sleeping bag. “No! It’s fine, it’s comfy! Granted, it’s better when you’re pitching your tent on sand, but this is good too!”

“What’s happening?” Rose grins, poking her head into Hux and Ben’s little tent, her face lit up with mischievous glee.

“Ben thought he was going to have a proper bed,” Rey pouts, smoothing his hair down affectionately even as his face burns red with embarrassment.

Rose practically cackles with laughter. “He did? Oh, your royal majesty, I’m so terribly sorry,” she continues, bowing deeply and dramatically. “Let me see what I can do!”

“Rose,” he growls, eyes narrowing. “Do not tell the others.”

“Incredible idea!” Rose gasps, disappearing briefly. Her voice filters through from outside clearly, the mirth evident. “Guys! Ben thought he was getting a bed!”

“I thought we were _all_ getting a bed,” he corrects hastily, “I wasn’t saying – damn it, Rose.”

Rey slips onto his lap and leans back against his broad chest, her shoulders shaking with laughter as all four faces appear in the door, all highly entertained.

“You seriously thought-?” Poe starts, shaking his head. “I’m never going to let you live this down.”

“You know you were the only person who had a bed for the invasion, right?” Hux continues, face stretched into an uncharacteristically wide smile. “Even I slept on a mat, you idiot.”

Finn is too busy laughing and clutching onto Rose for balance to even say anything and Ben groans and flops back onto the mat, leaving Rey sat on his thighs, laughing too. She can feel through the bond that he’s begrudgingly reassessing the mat’s comfort level now he’s lying on it which only makes her laugh harder.

“Listen,” Rose says once she’s finally caught her breath and wiped her eyes, “As funny as this is, I’m going to get the fire going, Rey can you give me a hand? We can have an early dinner if people are hungry?”

“Sounds fab, Rosie,” Finn nods as he wipes his eyes, pulling out of the tent and stretching. “Do the horses need sorting out?”

Rose, Finn and Poe fall easily into their routines from their last journey as Rey untangles herself from Ben who has attempted to steal a lazy kiss. Hux is lounging by the fire pit, ankles crossed casually as Rey emerges from the tent and lights the fire for Rose with a simple flick of her wrist. She settles next to Hux as she watches Finn and Poe gather the tethered horses and find them a nice grassy spot to graze on for the night.

“And you guys did this for how long?” Hux asks her, nodding to Ben as he steps out of the tent too and rolls his shoulders out. “Seems like you don’t really need the extra hands.”

“A while, a month or so? I honestly forget, the days blurred into one, especially in the desert,” Rey laughs, passing Hux a bowl of vegetables to peel at Rose’s command.

Ben seats himself on the other side of Rey and also receives a peeler and some potatoes, leaving Rey to cut up the meat. They fall into a comfortable silence, Poe singing folk songs under his breath as they tighten the tents’ ropes, expecting the winds to pick up considering how high in the hills they still are. It doesn’t take long for the pot of stew to start simmering, the delicious smell wafting through the camp and drawing everyone around it.

“What a team,” Poe grins, kicking back and rolling sleeves up to his forearms. The spring night is still light, the sun just starting to set behind the mountains. The wind is both warm and cool all at once, stirring with the promise of a beautiful evening. “Less than half an hour to set it all set up.”

He high fives Finn and then kisses him excitedly. Finn rolls his eyes but is grinning despite himself and then he settles back, cracking open some nuts they’d collected on the way and alternating between eating them himself and tossing them into Poe’s mouth, watching his mouth stretch into a smirk every time he manages to catch one.

“Are we planning on setting up a watch shift?” Hux asks, straightening up to stir the pot, noticing Rose’s worried eyes darting over the bubbling broth. She smiles gratefully at him.

Rey shrugs but turns her head to look at Ben. His jaw is tight and she shifts her hand to rest it on top of his, knowing he’s worried about her.

“I think it’s for the best,” she says with a glance around at the others. “Less because I think I’ll get hurt and more because we don’t want anyone knowing where we’re going. It’s less the risk of assassins and more the risk of spies.”

“And the risk of assassins,” Ben says stubbornly, inspecting the fabric of his breeches. “You might not be concerned but I am.”

Rey holds her tongue even though she’s slightly miffed that he thinks she can’t look after herself; she knows that’s not why he’s so upset.

“There’s enough of us that we don’t all need to do it every night, most people can get uninterrupted sleep,” Hux points out, clearing his throat. “If we’re getting eight, nine, hours of sleep a night, three people can easily do a shift each, leaving the other half to get proper sleep but still meaning everyone is getting about six hours.”

“Tactics are so sexy,” Rose hums as she nods at his words, turning to grab their bowls from her bag.

Hux’s ears go red but only Rey seated next to him notices.

“No point everyone having to wake up every night and mess around with order, me, Ben and Finn can take one night, Rose, Rey and Poe the other night. One magic user around each night makes the most sense.”

Poe raises his hand with a shit eating grin and Rey prepares herself for something awful. “Did you intentionally split up both couples, guaranteeing no tent sex for this entire trip, or...”

Everyone groans loudly and Poe lowers his hand, still grinning.

“Moving on,” Rose says firmly, smacking Poe’s shoulder, “I think food is about ready. Help yourselves.”

The conversation collapses into easy banter now the plans for the evening have been sorted – Hux, Ben and Finn will take watch tonight – and the food smells too enticing. Rey falls silent while she eats, savouring the taste. It’s much better food than they had on the way to Alderaan thanks to the kitchens supplying them this time and even if the food isn’t as good as the castle’s (she really misses that food already) it’s still a whole lot better than what Rey has eaten for her entire life.

They eat in companionable silence, the fire crackling merrily as the dusk draws in, darkening their surroundings. The flames light up the campsite with a cosy golden glow and they all shift closer to it as the heat of the day leaks away. Rey boosts the temperature of the fire for a bit but maintaining control of it takes too much concentration so the others convince her to let it go and they drag out their blankets and shuffle closer to the warmth. Rey tucks herself into Ben’s lap as usual, and Poe leans his head on Finn’s shoulder softly, Finn’s fingers playing with Poe’s curls tenderly.

“It’s the kind of night that needs campfire stories,” Rose declares, her hands wrapped around the pot of tea she’s steeping for everyone. The smell of it is making Rey sleepy, as is the comforting feel of Ben’s body heat behind her warding off the chill of the evening.

“Does anyone have one to share with the group?” Rose continues, stirring the tea and straining the teabags once she’s deemed it strong enough.

“Are we going for cute or horrible?” Ben says dryly, accepting his mug of sweet tea with a grateful smile. “We’ve got a few gruesome ones.”

“I like the sound of that,” Rose grins, her eyes glinting in the firelight. “Horror stories are the best!”

“Well this one is true,” Ben chuckles quietly, pressing a kiss to the top of Rey’s head. “It’s the story of my grandparents.”

Poe raises one eyebrow slowly. He knows the story in passing – it was the scandal that rocked Alderaan and Naboo and intrigue around it has never died down. Details – at least true ones – are hard to come by, both royal families having hushed up the tragedy to avoid the mess that would’ve come from it.

Hux too looks surprised that Ben is offering up this story but says nothing.

“I... I don’t like telling it, it kind of haunted me as a kid, but I think it’s... important. It’s important and, knowing what we know now about Palpatine, I think it might be helpful to know.”

He takes a sip of tea and swallows. Rey can feel the scalding heat moving down his throat.

“My grandmother, Padmé, was Queen of Naboo – they have an unusual system, she was queen but she was also elected, and their queens step down after four years. She was the youngest queen in recorded history and from all accounts she was... incredible at her job,” he smiles, “Once she’d finished her term, she became an advisor to the new queen and travelled all over the north, making friends wherever she went. Naboo knew prosperity like never before.”

Rey shivers as the tone of his voice drops at his last words. She’s unable to see his face sat where she is but she can see the others, all of them riveted to his words. There’s something about Ben’s voice, there always has been. Something magical and magnetic, low and sultry. Recently she’s noticed it less. It might have had something to do with Snoke’s influence over him, the anger inside him, she’s not entirely sure. But it’s out in full force now and it has paused the world beyond their circle. Everything else has dropped away.

“And while she was in Takodana, she met my grandfather. Anakin was king – Maz has only ruled since he... died. They fell in love,” Ben whispers, brushing his fingers down Rey’s plait, comforting himself with her presence. “It was a whirlwind thing, they were married so fast, Padmé was pregnant soon after. They were, so we’ve been told, very happy for a while.”

“What happened?” Rose murmurs, her fingers tightening around her mug. Her hair is moved by an invisible wind that ripples though the camp. The horses, grazing just beyond the circle of firelight, flick their tails and shift on their hooves.

“As the birth approached, Anakin apparently became obsessed with the idea that he would lose Padmé in childbirth. He read book after book searching for ways to prevent her death even though there were no signs that she was in danger,” Ben explains, swallowing hard. “It seemed to tear him apart from inside and corrupted him. Dark magic. It had to be. Now I’ve read the books my mother showed us...”

“Did she die?” Rey croaks, looking down at her lap and Ben’s fingers laced through hers.

He laughs hoarsely. “Not in childbirth. She delivered two healthy babies. Twins. My mother and my uncle.”

Rey frowns – Ben has never mentioned an uncle, and she’s certainly never been introduced to one. It doesn’t bode well for the story.

“You’d think that would have stopped Anakin’s obsession, but he somehow believed that it was he who’d saved them despite Padmé’s attempts to soothe him. He attempted more and more dark magic, more and more magic that he couldn’t possibly hope to harness. He wasn’t like me and Rey, it wasn’t in his blood like it is ours. One day, it was too much for him. Padmé was playing with my uncle – Luke – and Anakin snapped. The magic exploded out of him, killing the baby and injuring Padmé.”

There is long, heavy silence after his pause, everyone too horrified to break the spell of the story.

“He’d lost his mind. He’d gone too deep into something that he should never have touched. As it consumed him, he strangled her, deciding that she couldn’t live without him. He died as the magic ate through him but Padmé died too, still in his arms. My mother was in the nursery, screaming but safe. She was found the next day when the Organas came to visit and discovered the scene. They adopted her and my mother has never wanted any claim to Anakin’s line. When she found out, she renounced him and told Maz, who had ruled in the absence of any royal family, that she could keep the country, she didn’t want it.”

“Fucking hell,” Poe mutters, sitting bolt upright.

“That explains why Naboo were so scared of you,” Hux adds lowly, raking a hand through his burnished copper hair.

“Precisely. But it also explains something about Palpatine. Dark magic – any magic – wielded by someone who shouldn’t have it, is explosive, dangerous. The only magic users these days are dyads,” Ben continues, his grip visibly tightening on Rey, always defensive of the rarity of their bond.

“So Palpatine will be unbalanced?” Finn checks, his voice quiet, dwelling on the horrific story Ben has just recounted. “And he’s been using it for years and years.”

“Precisely,” Ben sighs, shrugging slightly. “He must have better control of it than Anakin did to have been using it for so long with no incidents, but... there will be a breaking point.”

“That’s good to know,” Hux sighs, filing away the information for later use. “We just have to find how to tip him over the edge.”

“Thank you, though, Ben. I know that can’t have been easy to share,” Rose says softly, her large eyes gently watching the man she had mistrusted until so recently.

Ben shrugs. “It’s nice to talk about my grandfather without feeling like I’m doomed to make the same mistakes.”

Rey twists in his lap and cups his cheek, forcing him to meet her eyes. She says nothing but kisses him firmly, smiling against his lips. “You’re a million times the man he was.”

“Speaking of dyads,” Hux says dryly, “I have a cheerful story if anyone fancies that before bed. It’s about one of the older ones. They were last pair, in fact, until these two.”

Turning back around, Rey glances across at him curiously even though she’s reluctant to pull away from Ben. “I’ve never heard anything about the others.”

“They were sisters from Hoth. They were born just as magic started to die out from the world as a way of preserving the knowledge and the belief, a bridge between the people and magic,” Hux begins, lowering his voice as the wind drops again. “They saved Hoth from being entirely washed away – the elder sister had ice powers, the younger could talk to animals and together they evacuated the entire kingdom and stopped the flood.”

As Hux continues telling the old fairy tale, Rey’s eyes slide shut. She doesn’t mean to fall asleep but the softness of Hux’s words, the warmth of the fire and the gentle, soothing flow of her own magic through Ben are a welcome lullaby. It’s not long before everything fades to black and her breathing evens out.

She wakes sometime later as she’s lifted in strong arms that can only be Ben’s and she curls into his embrace, reluctant to stir despite the gentle swaying as he carries her over to her tent, Rose holding the fabric open for him to duck inside. Her voice is low, a hum in the background of Rey’s consciousness. Rey feels Ben lay her down, feels her hands ghost across his shoulders, his jaw, his hands, as he tucks her into her sleeping bag and presses a kiss to her forehead.

Rey keens as he pulls away, the bond giving way with a soft sigh as he leaves for his own tent with Hux across the circle of their camp. Rose closes their door and crawls into the spot next to Rey, her head on the pillow next to Rey’s hair, smelling of sweet tea and wood smoke.

And although she wants to talk to Ben more, sending her hazy thoughts through the bond, sleep takes her again as she feels Rose’s fingers lace with hers and she’s dozing, carried through the night by the lullaby of the bond.


	3. I'm Gonna Breathe Fire

Rey quickly decides that she prefers going uphill to downhill, despite the burn in her legs when climbing. Downhill requires much more focus, keeping the horses steady, making sure they don’t speed up uncontrollably or hurt themselves. It’s also extremely depressing to see how far they still have to go, staring down the endless valleys to where the Empire awaits.

On the rare occasion she glances behind her to check on the other, Finn and Poe bringing up the rear, she remembers what it had been like climbing up the slopes, taking her first look at Alderaan, the bonfire at Winter Solstice. She’s planning to convince Ben to train with her this evening with swords and magic and at the reminder of the crackling bonfire, flames licking up towards the wintery sky, her skin shivers with magic.

Before that, though, they have miles and miles to cover.

“I’ve never been far east enough to cross into Hays,” Rey calls across to Rose as they shift to single file, picking their way through a rocky outcropping to rejoin the path on the other side. “What’s it like?”

Rose grins. “It’s not sandy, for one thing. Possibly the best part about it. _Thank you_ , eastern shores, for your weird climate.”

Rey laughs, smoothing Artoo’s mane softly as the horse makes it through the boulders and settles back onto the dirt track. “So what, the sand just... vanishes?”

“Kind of,” Rose snorts. “You’ll see. It’s a combination of the ocean and the mountains funnelling rain down onto the soil. It didn’t dry out like Jakku did.”

“I’ve never seen the ocean,” Rey admits. The lakes around Aldera had been more water than she’d seen in her entire life. She can’t even imagine what it’d be like to see blue, endless deep blue, all the way to the horizon and beyond.

“We might be able to see it, but we won’t be going close enough to visit, I’m afraid,” Rose pulls a face.

“Beach party is going to have to wait for the celebrations when we win the war!” Poe calls. “I’ll teach you how to swim, Rey!”

“Thanks, Poe,” she laughs, shaking her head.

“Hays might have changed since I was last there,” Rose warns them. “My information is pretty outdated remember. I’ve not been back since I joined the Rebellion.”

“What happened to Hays?” Rey asks quietly, watching Rose’s face for any signs that she’s poking to deep into a history that her friend doesn’t want to tell.

But Rose just wrinkles her nose up and sighs. “Well, the Empire happened, of course. Hays is mostly mining, right? And Palpatine clearly decided that no one else was allowed that wealth. Marble, jewels, building materials – you name it, we mine it. We were never a rich country, but everyone had enough and we built beautiful buildings. We love the sunshine - you value it more when you spend eight hours of the day underground. The city had parks and benches, pretty fountains and gardens as well as all the shops and houses and buildings. The gardens of Orwan, the capital, were some of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.”

“And then Palpatine came?”

“Right,” Rose says, the nostalgia in her eyes dying quickly. “He burned the gardens and the fields, knocked down the buildings, occupied Orwan and the surrounding districts. The rest of Hays is tiny villages, nothing big enough to stand up to the might of Jakku’s armies. Now everyone works for pitiful wages in the mines we all used to love,” she says bitterly, her head turned towards Jakku as if she wishes she were close enough to spit on Palpatine’s throne.

“My parents were determined to get me out of there and then when the Rebellion were asking for people to join – to free Alderaan – I figured I might as well try to save one country even if it wasn’t my own.”

Rey hands her the water flask solemnly. “You’ve not been back since?”

“No. I don’t know how my parents and my sister are. I’ve never heard from them – sending letters is hard enough considering they go through the Empire’s men, and they couldn’t exactly give the Rebellion’s location even if they knew it,” she mumbles. “We’ve just got to hope that they’re alive and that we can track them down. I can't even just go home, all those houses were destroyed and replaced with awful ones the Empire put up.”

“They’ll be there,” Rey promises, smiling across at Rose with all the optimism she can muster. She knows well enough how cruel the Emperor can be.

“I suppose we have the mountains to thank for the fact that Palpatine stopped where he did,” Hux adds, just behind Rey on his sleek white horse. “Jakku fell in, what, a week?”

Rey nods, her throat dry. Jakku is the largest country on the continent: Niima is the only city and the vast majority of the population are nomads like Rey had been as a child, wandering the same routes their ancestors have taken for generations. Once Palpatine had taken the capital, a previously independent city, it was easy enough to secure the few towns along the coast that had been minding their own business and chain up any of the desert people who refused to accept the new sovereignty. No one had known how to stop him, and there wasn't an army to defend them like the one Palpatine surrounds himself with now. “All that free land, all of it under his control in seven days.”

“And we all know the rest of the story,” Ben continues. “Pasaana, Tatooine, both gone too.”

“Hays held out for a while longer,” Rose adds for Hux’s benefit. The plight of the south was something Alderaanians knew about as a collective and not a series of world changing events. “It fell when I was a teenager, when Palpatine realised that the desert countries weren’t making him as a rich as he would’ve liked.”

“The rest is history,” Rey finishes. She spares a glance at Finn whose jaw is clenched tightly. He’s also from Jakku, from the city of Niima itself maybe or one of the coastal towns and drafted in to work in the palace and she wonders what his family has been through – what _he’s_ been through.

“It’s a reminder of why we can’t give up,” Poe says firmly, tightening his grip on the reins as he cuts through the group to lead, giving Rose and Rey a break. “So many people and so many places are depending on us.”

“Agreed,” Ben says quietly. He’s not joined in the conversation so far and Rey can sense the flickers of embarrassment; he tried to do the same thing, indirectly following the Emperor’s orders and the shame is something he hasn’t let go of yet. She pushes her love across the bond, hoping to soothe him until they can talk in private. She doesn't blame him for it, the others don't blame him for it either and she wishes he'd understand that.

* * *

They ride in silence for another hour before they stop for lunch, hopping from their horses gratefully and stretching out their stiff muscles. It won’t be a long break, they still have a lot of ground to cover, but even a quick walk around is enough to ease the ache of sitting in the saddles for so long. Not even tack made by the royal saddler with leather from the finest tanners in Aldera can make long journeys pleasant – only bearable.

Luckily they still have fresh food, and the bread is still soft and light as they tear it apart roughly to eat with the carefully wrapped cheeses. Ben leans back against a sun warmed rock and cracks his back happily. Despite not being used to this kind of travel, despite the situation, he is enjoying himself. He knows admitting it, even to himself, will result in Rey picking up on his thoughts.

He can feel her now, chatting with Hux and Rose, sprawled out on the flat rocks opposite, munching on her bread contentedly. She’s happy and relaxed, her skin already picking up a tan again. It reminds him that while she loves Alderaan, loves their new life, this is also part of her too. The sun and the sand and the endless days of walking and navigating by the stars that were all stolen from her.

She looks beautiful, as always, and he almost doesn’t notice when Poe nudges his side knowingly.

“What is it?”

“Stop oogling your wife,” Poe grins, waggling his eyebrows.

_Wife_. That’s still something he’s getting used to. He’s still not over the fact that she actually agreed to marry him, let alone that they went through with it, their little ceremony in the hall of the castle, their friends and family around them as the sunset streamed through the stained glass windows and illuminated her face in rainbows.

“I’ll oogle my wife all I want to, thank you very much, she’s mine to oogle at,” Ben protests.

Finn sits up and frowns. “Is ‘oogle’ even a word? It doesn't sound like one any more.”

“That’s irrelevant!” Poe cries, “I wanted to talk to you about this whole... imminent danger, threat of assassination stuff.”

Ben and Finn stop chuckling.

“You think something’s going to happen?” Ben says, his voice dropping so as not to disturb the others. This conversation doesn’t need to put a damper on their day too.

“I don’t think it’ll happen imminently, but I think Palpatine would be stupid not to try and take one or both of you out when he realises what’s heading right towards him. Logically, with you guys combined and attacking together he’s going to be hard pressed to win. Taking out one of you, though, and he removes our greatest weapon.”

“Over my dead body,” Ben growls, forgetting to keep his voice down. Hux looks up, his brow furrowed even if Rey and Rose, who are cloud spotting lazily, don’t stir.

“He would do it over your dead body,” Finn points out. “And that still leaves Rey with half of her soul gone, or whatever it is that you guys share. So that’s no good. Neither of you can die – and you can't just jump in front of a blade for her, idiot. That helps no one.”

Poe nods. “He’s right, Ben. Both of you have to be safe. If she died, you think you’d be in a position to coordinate an attack of the scale we’re planning? She would be in the same place if you got yourself killed.”

“Point taken,” Ben concedes after a long moment spent battling with himself, raking a hand through his hair and wishing he’d cut it a bit shorter before they left Aldera. It feels weird to acknowledge that Rey cares about him that much. He's so used to pushing people away, accepting that he is somehow broken and unloveable, that having people remind him so casually that Rey would be destroyed by his death is difficult to comprehend. But Poe and Finn sound so certain, and the bond between him and Rey makes it hard to ignore too. She loves him, she cares for him, he has to keep himself safe for her sake.

“So my solution is that we travel incognito through Hays, right up until we land on the Tico’s doorstep – if we can find it, anyway. No magic from you two, no fancy swords out for show, just a group of people moving through the Empire looking for work.”

“Poe Dameron, advocating for secrecy and not a full out fight?” Ben says dryly.

Poe rolls his eyes but the corner of his mouth twitches. “I know, I feel so mature. But Hays is heavily guarded. Rose might not have said this, but because it’s now the source of the Empire’s wealth there are ten times the soldiers there than anywhere else. Jakku is too big to make men effective but Hays? It’ll be _crawling_ with armoured guys. We’re going to have to be smart because there’s no way even you two could fight through those kinds of numbers.”

Ben nods reluctantly. Poe has a point, even though this is going to slow them down and make it much harder to move through the city if they have to stick to the rules. “Okay. And I assume you’re talking to just me because... because why?"

“Because you are the most dramatic person we know,” Poe beams. "Rey has likely assumed we'd sneak through this entire time - it's what we did on the way to Alderaan. And considering you threw a tantrum about sleeping on camping mats..."

“I did _not_ , don't do this, Dameron,” Ben grouses, shaking his head and taking a swig of his water. "But fine, I get it. No dramatics."

"No rushing to defend Rey with some fancy magic tricks the second we see a guard," Finn continues, leaning across to grab an apple and pecking Poe's cheek. "No jewelled swords flashing in the town square."

"Alright, I get it, I get it," Ben huffs. "Message received."

"Great, that didn't go too badly, Hux didn't need to be so cheerful we drew the short straw," Poe sighs.

"You drew _straws_ for who would talk to me? You little _shits_ -"

* * *

It takes three more days of careful riding before the craggy slopes of the mountains give way to the scrubby soil and hardy grass of the Haysian Plains. Rose’s face is split between pure joy and apprehension and she dismounts once they’re truly clear of the mountains, planting her feet firmly on the soil of her homeland.

“How are you feeling?” Hux asks as he leads his horse over to her where she stands. He slips off his horse so he’s not towering over her (not that being on the ground changes that, she is still tiny compared to him) and watches her carefully.

“Honestly? Just weird. I’d never really thought about coming home because it was always so far fetched. And now I’m here I want to cry and scream and sleep for a year,” she whispers, stroking her mare’s neck softly to ground herself.

Hux nods and swallows. “Well, it’s only us around. The horses might not like the yelling but you’re more than welcome to try if you think it’d help.”

She cracks a smile at that and glances up at him gratefully. “Thanks, Hux. I might try screaming at the sky once we’re out of an echoing valley, if it’s all the same to you?”

He actually _laughs_ and throws his head back in an action that surprises them all, most of all Ben who has never seen his general laugh like that in all the years he’s known him.

“Fair enough. Maybe if we wrap enough blankets around you it’ll muffle the sound?”

“I am un-mufflable, I promise you. Small but mighty,” Rose smirks.

“Oh I bet,” Hux smirks back, swinging himself back up onto his horse – they want to get another hour’s trek around the foot of the hills before they find somewhere to camp.

Rose giggles and rolls her eyes as she climb up too and kicks her horse into motion, taking in a deep breath of the air. Her tangled thoughts drop away quickly as she takes the time to focus on the here and now rather than the conflicting memories of the past. The sky here is clear and blue, speckled with fluffy clouds. The air is sweet, with the slight tang of the ocean even this far inland thanks to the winds that buffet the eastern shores of Hays daily. Nowhere else feels quite like home, she decides as they keep moving.

* * *

They stop earlier, giving Rey and Ben more daylight in which to practise. Camp is set up by a small lake, fed by mountain streams that trickle down from the hills beside them. Rey insists that they train on the far side of the tents, away from the water to make it ‘fairer’ even though Ben could still easily control and create water from where they square off against each other on the plains, the warm soil soft beneath their feet.

Rey carries her sword, Ben carries his, even as their magic jumps in the air around them. They are training with both today, learning how to use them together in combat as well as how to fight against another magic user – they still don’t know, and can’t know, the extent of Palpatine’s control of dark magic and need to expect the worst.

“Are you ready, sweetheart?” Ben calls from the other side of the roughly circular area Rey has made by charring the grass carefully.

“I was born ready,” she grins, unsheathing her sword and falling into the familiar opening stance.

Ben nods once and then _leaps_.

Rey reacts instinctively, darting out of the way and flinging her hand out, sending fire chasing after him as she moves away again swiftly, her sword held out in her other hand, warding him away. He’s stronger physically than her, and she knows she must use her magic to tire him out and keep the sword fighting as a last resort. Logically, she knows he will win anyway but she has no plans to go down without a fight. Logic plays no part in her style of fighting - scrappy, underhanded, using whatever she can.

The adrenaline surges through her bloodstream despite knowing that he would never hurt her. _Badly_. They’ve agreed that there needs to be at least some stakes while they fight. A sharp of ice sings as it cuts through the air just to the right of her head. Rey twists away, feeling it melt with the heat of her body pulsing into the air around her. Ben sends another bolt towards her and she flares up, melting it mid-air before it reaches her. She hears him chuckle through the blood pumping in her ears.

“Good!” Ben calls, “Now attack! Don’t stay on the defensive!”

Rey growls and ignores him, knowing he’s hiding behind ‘advice’ – she isn’t stupid enough to approach him, a man who has trained with a sword since he was old enough to walk. She will stay on the defensive if she wants to, thank you very much.

He laughs again and runs towards her, fiery red sword gripped in two hands, spinning with deadly, forceful momentum to meet her blade above her head. Her muscles strain against the weight of him bearing down on her, her hands tremble. Ben’s grin turns almost feral.

And then she drops to the floor and rolls, kicking her feet out and sending a wall of white hot flames towards him. It’s faster than he was expecting, she can tell, the spike of surprise lancing through their connection. Unbalanced from the loss of resistance, his sword lurches forwards and he barely avoids her attack, quenching the flames with a wave of water that sweeps along the floor and catches her in its grasp.

Rey splutters, unable to get to her feet as the water carries her back over to him and deposits her at his feet.

“Yield,” he commands, levelling his sword at her.

Rey looks up at her husband, a glint in her eye, and spits at him.

The others have gathered by the tents to watch. She knows this without looking because Poe is whooping loudly at her.

Grinning from ear to ear, Rey slashes at him loosely, nearly catching him across his chest before setting the grass around him on fire, surrounding him in a molten cage.

“Engage me properly, Rey,” he calls, putting out the fire with a wave of his hand, the scorched grass sizzling menacingly. “Fight me!”

“You’re never going to convince me to do it,” she laughs happily, “It was you who told me never to fall for taunts in battle. I’m better than that.”

Ben just lunges for her again, using his bulk to make her take a step back and they exchange a series of blows so fast that Rey is forced to fall back on instinct to block the strikes. She knows she is being moved backwards, manoeuvred towards the edge of the water and through the camp. She knows it and she hates it. Rey grits her teeth and snarls.

As she jumps backwards over the campfire, she sets it ablaze furiously. Ben hisses and sidesteps the firepit, clearly too focussed on the physical fight to respond with his own magic. Even so, the ground beneath his feet crystallises, the frost spreading out from him as his control weakens with bloodlust.

Putting all of her attention on the magic – her strength, not his – and defending herself with the minimum energy she can, Rey grits her teeth and sets the water behind her bubbling with heat, raising the temperature of the lake enough that the waves lapping at her feet steam and swirl with magic. Sure, the water might be his, but this heat, this fire, is hers.

She darts backwards into the water, still maintaining her guard against his glinting blade and praying this will be enough to stop him.

It isn’t.

Ben advances through the water until they are both waist deep and soaked through. The water around his legs, around his waist, crackles with his magic, energy plummeting as his body temperature nullifies hers. At the edges, the water freezes over slightly, a fine layer of ice covering the hot water no matter what she tries to do.

And then he strikes again, bearing down on her from the shallower water, with his height and his strength and all of his honed muscle. Her gold blade is wrenched from her hands by the force of the blow, the shudder rippling up the grip, through her hands and body and she stumbles in the water, falling to her knees unarmed.

He levels his sword at her chest, the tip right underneath her chin, and grins.

Rey tilts her head up to look at him and pulls herself out of the water slowly, holding his gaze. The water drips off her, steaming against her hot skin. There is a beat of silence where it’s impossible to tell if she’ll yield or leap at him with her teeth and nails, and then she laughs, shaking her head like a dog as water flies everywhere.

He laughs too, flicking some lake weed from her shoulder. Retrieving her sword from the lake bed is no big deal – he shifts the water around it to ice and floats it up where she melts it again, taking her weapon back and sheathing it at her hip.

“You win,” she smiles, tipping her head to the side.

“You did well,” he promises, his voice low. He steps closer to her in the water and she slides around him to the higher ground, their faces now level.

“I nearly had you,” she pouts, her lips millimetres from his, her breath hot against his cool skin.

“You always have me,” he swears, cupping her cheek and kissing her deeply.

She sinks into the embrace eagerly, her heart still in her throat and the magic of their bond sending eddies through the water. Sparks fly through the air as she slides one arm around his waist to anchor him close to her. The fight is forgotten. Training is forgotten. The world around them is -

“OI COME AND HELP WITH DINNER!” Poe hollers from the shore. “AND STOP GROPING EACH OTHER!”

“You literally _just_ pinched Finn’s butt,” Rose reminds him and Finn rolls his eyes as he helps Rose fill their pot of water to boil in a moment.

“That’s very different to whatever that is,” Poe says with a smirk, waving his hand in the general direction of Rey and Ben.

Rey can feel her cheeks going red and she pulls away from Ben, only for him to tug her closer with a chuckle as they wade back out of the water. He kisses the top of her damp head softly.

“We’ll practise again tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rey says, exhausted but content.

Hux appears from their tent, his shirt loose and his sleeves rolled up. “Are you two done showing off now?” he asked innocently. “Back to helping us mere mortals with the chores?”

With a flick of his wrist, Ben sends the pot water in a beautiful arc through the sky before yanking it down all over Hux’s head. Hux yelps and splutters as the water soaks his shirt and drips into his eyes and he stands frozen to the spot, wiping his face desperately.

Rose laughs loudly, rocking back on her heels as she pauses over the fire Rey had conveniently lit earlier. Rey’s eyes widen momentarily before a laugh bursts out of her too and soon everyone – even Hux – is joining in.

“Mere mortals should be careful about who they insult,” Ben declares, dusting his hands off lightly.

Hux, cracking a grin, bows low at the waist, twisting his hand in an unnecessarily fancy gesture as he bends over. The water drips from his fringe and Rey laughs again.

“Here, I’ll dry us all off,” she offers, still snorting as she heats the air around her hands gently and beckons Hux over. “ _Then_ we can help with the chores.”


	4. Another Tear For Today

“Here we are, that’ll be Sebris,” Rose calls out as the scattered buildings begin to come into focus on the shimmering horizon. The plains stretching out to their right twist the light and Sebris is only visible now thanks to the mountains that break up the monotony of the landscape and draw their eyes along the gentle slopes towards the settlement.

The town (if it can even be called that, Rose has already told them that the capital is the only substantial place in Hays) is another hour’s ride away but they all pause and wrap themselves in the heavy hooded cloaks they’re carrying for occasions exactly like this.

“Why do we even need to wear these?” Rey asks, wrinkling her nose up from underneath the large hood, her face cast into shadow.

Finn tweaks it back with an affectionate gesture so she can actually see. “Empire’s men, remember? Gotta stay hidden and they’ll likely recognise our faces by now – or at least yours and Ben’s. You’re famous.”

“I’m not sure I like this fame,” Rey snorts, securing the cape at her throat and rolling her shoulders out. “Rose, your family aren’t in Sebris are they?”

“No they’re in Orwan, across the river,” Rose explains. “But because the bridge is the only safe way to cross – even Ben would struggle to control that water, its straight from the mountain – we need to make sure we can get across the bridge on the far side of town and we can't go around.”

“So we sneak through Sebris?” Finn sighs, throwing the blanket roll over his extra weapons so they don’t immediately arouse suspicion.

“Partially – we need to get some supplies,” Poe adds, “Food and what not. As much as we can so we can make it through Orwan quickly and have as much time in The Archive as we can.”

“They’re much more likely to recognise one of us in Orwan,” Rose nods, “We’ll be stopping off at my parents, if we find them, and then riding straight through to the valley.”

As they start to approach the town, they slow the horses’ pace, hoping to appear more like weary travellers than a group containing two royals, a war general and three rebellion fighters. The endless plains give way to a dirt road winding its way around the foothills, and here and there scrubby bushes and swaying grasses dot the edge of the path.

The buildings are as Rose has described: beautifully constructed of the same rock that makes up the mountains here, but worn and in disrepair, the money that Hays used to put aside to maintain them funnelled back into Niima and hoarded by the Emperor. The carvings are showing the first signs of erosion, windows are broken and boarded back up and the once beautiful flower beds now contain only a few struggling blossoms. Ben swallows hard, feeling sick. Rose has mentioned that the soldiers covered the land in salt when they invaded and this is the first evidence of that cruelty, robbing the land of the promise of new life and making their only industry mining, giving them no way to survive outside of the Empire’s control.

At first glance, as they approach the closest houses, the place seems deserted. It’s midday, the sun blazing overhead, and he briefly wonders if everyone is just sheltering from the heat. But it isn’t _that_ hot.

“I can feel people around,” Rey whispers to him from Artoo’s back, her hands twisting around the reins nervously. “Their heat signatures. They’re all indoors.”

“Watching us,” Hux mutters back from her other side, “I bet.”

“Where’s the grocer’s? Should we split up and get this done faster?” Finn ventures, also on edge.

Rose shakes her head slowly and dismounts her horse as they reach the beginning of the main street through town. On the porch closest to them, an old man straightens up in his rocking chair and eyes them suspiciously as he lowers his pipe. Ben doesn’t blame him: when your town is the last one before the road peters out to nothing, anyone coming from the plains is an outsider.

“We don’t split up, because I’m the only Haysian here and if I’m not with you, you stand zero chance of getting anything. Even with me, we might be turned away,” she says, lowering her hood as she slips over to the elderly man.

“Excuse me, sir,” she calls, trying to ignore the way his eyes are staring over her shoulder at the group. “Are the shops around here open?”

“Who’s askin’?”

Ben winces and turns away, knowing he is infinitely the most recognisable. He can hear Rose’s voice clear in the warm air as he fusses with the saddle blanket poking out from under the leather in front of him for something to do.

“Me, I’m asking,” Rose says calmly. “My family are in Orwan, but we want to get supplies here, heard they’re pretty hard to come by in Orwan right now.”

“Well if that isn’t the truth,” the man mutters under his breath. “Shops are just up there, take the second left, they’ll reopen from lunch in about half an hour, I’d say.”

Her face brightens. “Thank you, sir!”

He nods once. “No problem, kid. But you tell your foreigner friends to keep their heads down. That one is paler than the snow on the peaks, the soldiers will be all over you if you aren’t careful.” He points to Ben.

Ben refrains – just – from rolling his eyes. Rey giggles quietly despite the grave warning.

“Will do, thank you again,” Rose says quickly, giving the man a grateful wave before hurrying back over to her horse and leading the way down the road.

They all dismount and follow her quietly, not wanting to disturb the silence that inhabits the town. Ben looks back over his shoulder as the old man raises his pipe to his lips again. He raises one grey eyebrow at Ben knowingly. Ben feels Rey’s arm slip through the loop of his and tug him along. He tries to put the old man’s eyes out of his mind. He doesn’t succeed.

He does, however, tug the hood a little further over his face.

* * *

There are a small group of Empire soldiers in full armour scattered around the sleepy market square when they arrive. They lean against lantern posts, ask questions to the cowed stall holders and run their eyes over everyone and everything that comes in and out of the square as the shops begin opening up slowly around them. Rey is grateful that they seem to be more interested in harassing the butcher’s daughter than _really_ inspecting everyone walking through the area. The town is subdued, even in the market place which Rey knows from experience can be a chaotic hub in any town. She gets the feeling most people here are exhausted, days passing by painfully slowly.

The group attempt to walk the fine line between hiding their faces and keeping their heads down _and_ acting like they have every right to be here and there’s nothing to suspect. They manage it with varying levels of success. Rose’s hand is on Finn’s arm lazily as she guides them around the square, conversing with the shop owners and vendors, getting Finn’s help with some lazy bartering while the others fiddle with the saddle bags and secure the supplies that Rose and Finn hand over to the them. They don’t need to haggle at all, they have more than enough gold to pay for everything at full price, but in a town like this a group of rich strangers would attract even more attention than simply a group of strangers.

Rey does notice with warm fondness that Rose and Finn aren’t beating the price down _too_ far – all the sellers seem pleased with the price they’ve cut.

They make it half-way around the loop of shops before trouble starts.

They approach the butcher’s shop, next to which three or four soldiers are gathered, chatting loudly and making raucous remarks. The butcher remains silent, his mouth pressed into a thin line, his expression drawn. His daughter makes eye contact with Rose and both Rey and Rose recognise the look in her eyes – it is universal.

Rose sucks in a deep breath, glances back at Rey and strides up to the shop undaunted, Rey right behind and Finn pausing half way between the girls just in case, leaving the Northerners behind. Rey can feel the spike of panic shoot through Ben as she leaves his reach but she doesn’t care right now.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Rose says cheerily, deliberately loud enough to cut across the soldiers’ conversation and draw their attention.

The man looks bewildered – most people in this town live their lives skirting around the Empire. Rose is like a sandstorm sweeping through and refusing to be cowed. Rey loves her for it and smiles under her hood as she takes up her position just behind Rose’s shoulder, lifting her chin so the soldiers can see her eyes and the fire in them. Their laughter seems to quieten but Rey can’t tell if it’s her wishful imagination.

Neither of them cut a particularly imposing silhouette, but despite their best weapons being hidden, it’s clear even under the cloak that they are both fit and armed. The four tall and deathly quiet men standing a short distance behind them probably doesn’t hurt either.

“We’re looking to get a small amount of fresh meat, and then whatever jerky and dried meats you have, if that’s alright?” Rose smiles, polite as always despite the gaze of four Empire soldiers burning into the side of her face.

“Where are you lot from then?” one of the soldiers asks, folding his arms across his armoured chest. Rey notes that they are wearing metal – enough metal that if she had to burn them, she could.

“Around here,” Rose answers lightly, keeping her focus on the butcher. Rey chooses to watch the daughter who is gripping the carving knife behind the counter extremely tightly.

Rey has lived in fear for most of her life. It is only recently that she’s felt she can defend herself if she has to. She can’t imagine living in this town, watching the men who invaded walk through the streets as if they own them, learning to hold her tongue and grip her knife a little tighter just in case one day they try and reach over the counter or push her further than she can take. That’s a different kind of fear, the slow creeping sort that wires you differently the longer you live under it. And it’s not just this girl, this shop. It’s the whole town. The whole country. Over half the _continent_ lives like this.

“Where around here?”

“Originally I’m from Orwan,” Rose says, keeping her voice light as she leans against the shop wall, watching the butcher carefully slice and wrap the cuts she points to. “But now I move around a bit.”

“And you, sweetheart?” The man shifts on his feet, his attention now on Rey who is evidently not from Hays.

She smiles sweetly, showing her teeth. “Jakku.”

His eyebrows inch up his forehead. “Long way from home, ain’t you? What brings you here?”

Dangerous territory. Rey says nothing and even Rose pauses checking her gold purse to prepare.

“Cat got your tongue? Come on, don’t be shy...”

Rey rolls her eyes. The tension only mounts and the shop keeper’s hands shake as he secures the last of the meat and places it silently on the scales, holding his breath. He seems to be mentally preparing to mop the ground outside his shop of someone’s blood.

The soldier pushes off the wall and his friends stir behind him. Rey feels the anger pulsing through Ben’s blood where he stands frozen behind her: he cannot start a fight without exposing them, he cannot even step in to intervene as his face is far too recognisable. They’ve seen wanted posters on boards around town and haven’t dared to get too close just in case it’s their faces on them.

“I don’t really want to talk to you, that’s all,” Rey says tightly, brushing her cloak aside to reveal the pair of knives at her hip that she’s wearing instead of her golden sword. “Do you not have better things to do?”

The men laugh and it reminds her of the way the guards used to sound, leering at her through the bars of her cage under Niima City.

“No, we really don’t, because we’ve been posted here in the middle of fucking nowhere with nothing and no one to do, because this bitch here won’t put out and we don’t want to share,” he sneers. “So, dearest, tell us why you’re here.”

Rey grits her teeth painfully and she feels Finn step up behind them, his eyes fixed on the soldiers too. They can’t afford a fight, they _can’t_ , and if she doesn’t think of something quickly, there will be one.

She can’t do it. There is nothing in her head at all.

“Alright, alright, let’s leave this here, shall we?” Finn says coolly, cutting in front of them to hand the gold to the butcher, not bothering to try and cut the price down this time. “Look, mate, there are six of us and we have far better weapons and, no doubt, better training than the four of you. I trust there are more than four of you in town but you’d never make it out of the square in time to call for back up, I guarantee it.”

His voice is scarily cheerful as he says this, his hand resting on the sword on his hip as he looks around, drawing attention to their total lack of back up.

The soldiers seem to reassess the situation, noticing the murderous gazes of Ben, Hux and Poe fixed on them too. Rey hates that they required proof of her and Rose’s capabilities from Finn but she swallows her pride and takes the parcels from Rose, her mouth clamped shut. She slips away to hand them to the boys who pack them away as fast as they can, not wanting to have their backs to the men for any longer than they have to.

“So what you’re going to do, to avoid dying here in this square right now, is shut up and let us finish our business here, and then you’re going to let us leave and head out, alright?” Finn adds, his voice still unfailingly sweet. Rey has never seen him like this, vibrating with contained anger. She remembers with a sinking feeling that Finn _was_ a soldier for the Empire. He’s probably seen this behaviour a thousand times over and infinitely worse. She suddenly understands: protecting the man and the girl, and her and Rose, is a way for him to fight back, however small.

“Leave it,” one of the soldiers at the back mumbles, staring at Finn and the group of them and mentally calculating the odds of survival. He must realise the odds are slim.

“Yeah, come on, it’s not like they’ve actually caused any trouble, I don’t want to die,” another croaks.

The man closest to Rose and Finn sweeps his eyes across them one last time and takes half a step backwards. Rey can feel Hux and Poe suck in a breath behind her, can feel Ben’s pulse pounding in time with hers, can feel the tautness of the horses’ muscles, sensing danger.

The tension seems to swell and then deflate, like it cannot climb any higher and so chooses to collapse rather than explode. The man nods and turns away slowly, bitterly, to retreat.

Finn slowly lets his hands unfurl from clenched fists and Rose rests her palm on his back soothingly, dropping the last of the gold onto the butcher’s counter. Her eyes lock on the daughter who is still gripping the knife, her hands visibly shaking.

“If they ever try anything,” Rey calls across to her once the soldiers have vanished around the corner. “You take that knife and you put it between their ribs, you hear me?”

The subtle flicker in the girl’s hazel eyes mimics the fire in Rey’s own. Rey reckons she’ll be okay despite the fear. Some people are shut down by it – Rey has been there herself – but sometimes, the fear can wake you up instead.

“Come on,” Ben murmurs, his fingers slipping around her wrist, thumb brushing across her pulse point soothingly, his cool skin a balm to her anger. “We need to move. They might yet decide to come back with more men.”

She nods and turns away sharply, pulling her hood back down over her face and tucking against Ben’s side. Rose stays close to the horses and Finn, his temper mostly back under control, deals with the rest of their purchases.

No soldiers come after them in the time it takes them to finish shopping, but they don’t hang around and mount the horses the second they’re back onto the road, riding as hard as they can out of town. The altercation, although unwanted, is a powerful reminder of what they are trying to accomplish, and they all wordlessly continue their pace for long after they normally stop to camp for the night, determined to put the town and the potential for disaster far behind them.

* * *

It is another day’s ride to Orwan. Rose is shaking with nerves and excitement long before the city even comes into view. Although she no longer knows where her parents live – half the city was torn down in the invasion and rebuilt later to accommodate the workers – even knowing she’s close to them is adrenaline enough.

“Okay, once again everyone please follow my lead – we are not going to be engaging with any soldiers this time,” she calls from her horse at the front, smoothing her hand over its mane gently. “I know, I know, it was my fault, blah blah blah, but not again. We’re asking about my parents _only_ and then we are going straight there. If they aren’t around, or we can’t find them...” She pauses, clearly not liking having to entertain that thought. “Then we ride straight through. That would be a long day but we can do it, the far side of the city is much wilder, there will be places to camp the second we’re there.”

“How large is the city?” Hux asks, “Compared to, say, Aldera?”

“Larger. And more confusing. Inside the wall is a maze. The main roads are largely on the flat, but the city is half carved into the mountains,” Rose smiles, her gaze fixed on the dusty line of the horizon. “It’ll be harder to get through, and there are likely to be real patrols.”

“I assume it’ll be like Niima, right?” Poe chimes in, looking across at Finn with a twisted, sympathetic expression. They all know Finn barely talks about it, but his knowledge will be invaluable now.

“I’d imagine so,” Finn mutters, shrugging his shoulders. “Back there it was groups of four or five men, one at least a rank above the rest to keep order. There aren’t set patrol routes, so much as sectors to keep an eye on. We won’t know what the sectors will be, or the time frame they’re given per patrol but in Niima it was once every half hour in the central areas, roughly once every hour in the outer districts. By the time you got the very edge it was whenever you felt like it, which wasn’t often.”

“But people aren’t trying to flee Niima. There’s nowhere to go,” Hux adds, probably mentally pulling apart the map of the city Rose has drawn, analysing what she remembers for weaknesses or strategies. “They _might_ try and flee Orwan, so we should assume that the edges and the walls will be far more heavily guarded, more like Aldera.”

“Right,” Rose agrees. “But there are plenty of people who live outside the walls, probably more than inside, the city has grown much bigger than was originally planned because it’s so close to all the minerals. My parents used to live outside the walls, so that won’t be the issue.”

“Why can’t we just go round the walled part, do we _have_ to get into the city?” Rey frowns. If they’re trying to remain undetected, surely passing through two sets of gates – in and out – and navigating their way through the likely heavily militarised centre is stupid.

“We can’t,” Ben shrugs. “Remember, it’s built up into the mountains high enough that we couldn’t ride the horses _up_ and round, and the city extends far enough into the plains that to ride around to the south and then head north back into the mountains would take too long.”

Rey sighs. “Great, so more sneaking?”

“More sneaking,” Rose nods, her expression grim. “I’m sorry.”

The cloaks go on once more as the road from Sebris merges with the larger road into the capital city. This one is wide, with markings down the middle for the carts that used to come this far out, headed for the western town and the trade routes to both the North and the South.

They’d left camp by dawn that morning to give them more time to reach the city, so it’s still early when they arrive. Despite the massive size of the city, and the fact that it extends beyond the walls and creeps up the mountainside, it begins abruptly, the houses and farms huddled together rather than sprawling out across the plains like Sebris.

All the buildings are the same warm stone with dark roofs and out here on the outskirts they are low, growing taller and taller as Rey scans her eyes down the road that twists and turns before it hits the walls a long way away. There, the height and scale of the buildings shoots up, the structures mirroring the grandeur of the mountains they fringe. It is a metropolis unlike anything Rey has ever seen and she sucks in a breath at both the realisation that they have to make it through this undetected and at the wall of warmth, hundreds of thousands of heat signatures merging into one in front of her.

“There are so many people,” Rey breathes, Artoo halting as he realises that Rey is too busy staring and absorbing it to want to move forwards. “So _so_ many people.”

Ben pauses next to her and smiles at the awe on her face. “It’s the second largest concentration of population on the continent, although it might have overtaken Niima recently.”

“We should keep moving,” Rose says softly, reaching across and gripping Rey’s shoulder quickly. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover if we want to find my parents.”

Rey nods and shoots Rose a warm smile. She can unpack her feelings later – right now, their priority is finding the Ticos.

And so they begin. They dismount and lead the horses through the bustling streets, trying to copy the bowed heads and hunched backs of the citizens and sticking to the edges of the streets to avoid the occasional uniformed patrol they see. Rose, Finn and Rey once again do all of the talking, their accents fitting in far better here where there seems to be a mix of mostly Haysians with the occasional Pasaanan and Jakkuvian, leaving Ben, Hux and Poe to watch the horses and keep their Alderaanian-accented mouths shut.

It’s an hour before someone has heard of the Ticos, and even then they don’t know where they live, just Paige’s name – ‘the pretty young thing, repairs tools, right?’ – and nothing more.

It’s _another_ hour until they get any solid information: Hue and Thanya Tico live right up against the mountain in the area that was rebuilt after the soldiers tore through, and Paige works a mile away in a small repair shop. They don’t know the address, sure, but Rose is practically hyperventilating and so Finn thanks the haggard looking man profusely as he steers her away before she freaks out.

They narrow the search down to the area around Paige’s supposed shop, asking for blacksmiths and farriers and carpenters and anything that might be what the man had meant.

Several people point them in the same direction, and soon they’re turning onto a street of run down but very much open shops. It’s quieter – Rey supposes few people can afford anything but the basics – but there are still plenty of people going about their day so they keep their hoods up and their voices down.

And then Rose, whose eyes have been scanning every shop and stall and window for a glimpse of her sister, stops dead in the middle of the street. Rey walks into her back and grips her waist to stop herself falling onto the cracked flagstones of the road. Artoo hrrmphs behind her, unimpressed with the sudden change in pace.

“Paige?” Rose’s voice is cracked and doesn’t carry over the background bustle of the shops and the city beyond. “ _Paige?_ ”

Rey follows her friend’s eyes to the open entrance of a blacksmith’s shop. Bent over the anvil, hammering what looks like a pickaxe head into shape, is a slim girl with Rose’s colouring, Rose’s ink black hair and the same determined eyes. Her arms are toned and her shoulders under her tunic are muscled more than Rose’s, but the resemblance is uncanny. It’s Paige Tico.

“PAIGE!” Rose sobs, launching herself forwards so fast that Rey blinks and Rose is gone, pushing through the people unfortunate enough to get between her and her sister.

Paige looks up and pushes her hair back off her sweaty forehead, her brown eyes widening in shock as she sees who it is. The hammer falls to the floor as Rose collides with her, their arms tangled immediately as Paige yells, pushed backwards with the force of Rose’s arrival.

“Paige, Paige, I’m back, I’m home, I found you!” Rose whimpers, squeezing her sister so tightly that Rey thinks it might hurt but Paige doesn’t even flinch, staring down at her little sister with such blinding love and disbelief that Rey blinks away tears.

The others gather around the shop hastily, bringing the horses in close and providing a screen for the women as Rose starts babbling nervously about how she’s sorry she couldn’t come home sooner, and are Mum and Dad alright, where are they, are _you_ alright, what’s happened since I left?

Paige just prises Rose off her and cups her cheeks to look her sister in the eye, something she hasn’t been able to do for years. “Rosie, thank the gods you’re okay.”

And then, after a moment of silence, she wraps her back into her arms and cries weakly, her shoulders shaking with relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points if you spot the Divergent reference.  
> Did I really make a whole plot point/near fight just because the imagine of the gang in a western style shootout was funny? Yes, yes I did.  
> I love Paige Tico she was never supposed to be a main character but... here we are...


	5. I'm The Same But I'm Bolder

Rose trusts Paige implicitly, and therefore the others trust her too. She leads them into the back of the shop, securing the horses round the side, as Rose tells her a somewhat abbreviated version of the story and their destination. It’s a lot of information and Paige has to pause Rose every other sentence to ask questions that Poe and Hux can largely answer for her as Rose ploughs ahead, hardly letting go of her sister’s hand.

Once the whole sorry tale is out and Paige is nodding her understanding (for the most part, she still seems sceptical that Ben and Rey are _really_ magical which, Ben supposes, is fair enough), she sits them all down and asks them what they need her to do. Ben likes her instantly: no faffing around, no wasted time, straight to business.

“We need somewhere to stay tonight and then potentially some help getting through the city tomorrow to reach the Archive. Probably the same on the way back,” he explains, lacing his fingers through Rey’s and brushing the back of her hand gently with his thumb.

“I can do that,” Paige promises. “My boss won’t like it but he’ll understand. All the shops get a lot of soldiers checking in and they’ll probably ask if I’m not there, but he’s a decent guy, sympathetic, you know.”

Hux raises an eyebrow. “Sympathetic?”

Paige nods. “To the Rebellion. Most people here are, there’s just no way of organising anything under the Empire’s nose. Too many garrisons around to attempt a fight, curfew too tightly controlled to have meetings, you name it they’ve thought of a way to prevent it. But if there was a spark, something to tip it in our favour... People would fight, I know it. We’ve all suffered too much for too long.”

This wasn’t something they’d anticipated, or something they’d planned to do, but Ben can see just from a quick glance around at the others that it’s now something they should consider. The whole purpose of this, the planned siege, defeating the Emperor, is to help people, to stop Palpatine's iron grip on his Empire.

“We didn’t come here to start another rebellion,” Ben explains and sees Rose’s burning eyes fall on him. “But maybe... on the way back...”

Hux rubs his jaw thoughtfully and begins to pace the cramped space, his brain almost audibly whirring. “That could work. Paige, do you think if we had, say, two days in the Archive, you could get the word around. Is it even feasible with the amount of soldiers here – how many are there, for that matter-“

“Woah,” Rose laughs, her expression lightning as she hops up from her seat on the table and rests her hand on the crook of Hux’s arm. “Deep breaths, idiot, we need to sit and do this properly, so zip this all up and save it for later.”

“Agreed,” Paige nods, folding her arms across her chest and glancing at the standing clock in the corner of the room. “I need to finish my shift, Arden will be back from his rounds and as much as he might support an organised attempt to fight back, he’d still rather not harbour six enemies of the Empire in his shop I’m sure. So this needs to wait.”

“Can we go to the house? Will Mum and Dad be there?” Rose blurts out, needing the answer to her one lingering question.

“You can, they won’t be home yet. They’re in the mines,” Paige says bitterly. “I’ve only got this job here because there has to be someone repairing the tools, right? Everyone who isn’t necessary elsewhere is down there all day every day.”

Ben looks down at the floor, not knowing what to say in the face of years of suppression. At the very least, Rose’s parents are alive and well enough, and that counts for something. Rose’s tense shoulders relax slightly and she nods, relieved even if Paige’s resentful words leave a sour taste in her mouth.

“And we’ll be safe there? We won’t bring the soldiers down onto your heads?” Finn checks from his spot next to Poe. The last thing any of them want is for their presence to cause trouble for the Ticos when they didn’t sign up for this.

Paige nods. “The soldiers don’t patrol up the hill as much. They’re lazy, the slopes are steep and it’s all miners living around there. We’re all too tired to start a fight after work.”

“Then we’ll head there now, Paige, and see you when you finish?” Rose double checks, chewing her lip as she watches her sister’s determined expression carefully.

Something crosses Paige’s face, something only siblings can pick up on, the closest thing in existence to the way him and Rey can sense each other’s thoughts. Her features soften and she nods. “Yeah, course, Rosie. A few hours max, I promise.”

“Okay,” Rose says quietly, taking in a deep breath and steeling herself for leaving her sister again, even if it’s only temporarily.

Ben gets it – even with the bond between them, even knowing logically that Rey is safe, he hates her being out of sight. The visual reminder of her safety makes a huge difference, and Rose hasn’t even had the luxury of seeing Paige recently. They could’ve arrived in Hays and found they’d died in the invasion, they could’ve discovered any number of awful things. Even two hours apart now is a lot.

Ben rests his hands on Rose’s shoulder softly. “Come on, if we get there quickly, we can rest the horses and start making some plans.”

Rose looks up at him and nods, clenching her jaw. “Sure, there’s things to do.”

And so they get moving again. Paige gives Rose the address and some directions, they untie the horses and lead them down the street straight towards the sloping roads and the mountains right in front of them. Rose looks straight ahead and refuses to turn to watch Paige standing in the shop door. It’s something he’s seen so many times in all of his friends, and in Rey – that resolute determination not to falter, to keep pushing ahead because they have to – but like every time, he hopes it’s the last time.

The roads quickly become a cracked and broken mess, more tracks than streets, and the incline grows quickly, forcing the paths to zig zag up the hill, houses shoddily built along each turn with small porches and lines of washing strung between them, the same worn uniforms under every peg. Children play unattended by the sides of the road and Ben assumes all the adults here are still working. When there are adults visible, they’re watching through the windows with tired eyes, or sitting in chairs on the front steps, napping.

It’s a different feel to the lower city, the whole community not really living here but merely existing, a rest place in between long days and nights in the mines. Ben’s not sure how the system really works – if they’re paid but it’s pitiful, or if they work for nothing – but the mood is impossible to miss. Hays is tired and mournful, but there’s a low current of anger too. Maybe he’s making it up, maybe it’s wishful thinking, but what Paige said sticks with him.

If they can reach the Archive and find a way to defeat Palpatine, if Paige can spark something here for them to fan on their way back through, they could make a real difference. Ben _wants_ to make a difference. He still feels the guilt of what he did to the North and maybe doing something good here will begin to balance the scales.

Rey must catch the drift of his thoughts because she tugs on his hand and smiles up at him, her eyes clear of the loathing he feels for himself sometimes when his mind wanders. “You’ve already balanced the scales, Ben,” she promises, her words firm. “This is just extra.”

He leans down and kisses the top of her head, her cloak’s hood pushed back now they’re confident they won’t be stopped by any soldiers. Her hair is warm from the sun and highlighted in gold. She smells like home.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

Rose is counting numbers on the houses when she runs up the last bend. She stops in her tracks in front of the house on the end of the row. It looks identical to all the others, same layout, same stone, same hastily constructed roof, the building work flimsy compared to the original Haysian style of the older buildings in the centre that’s below them now. The tallest buildings below them are so impressive in height that their top levels are still level with the houses on the slopes, way up in the hills.

“This is it. Paige said to let ourselves in,” she calls, her voice shaking slightly. Her parents aren’t home – the door is shut and the windows all closed compared to the currently occupied buildings, their windows thrown open to catch the breeze.

Poe and Hux lead the horses around the side of the house, careful on the uneven ground. Rey slips over to stand next to Rose, smiling across at her.

“We can get in and settled, and maybe we could cook for them so there’s something when they get back? We have the supplies for it.”

Rose nods and strides forwards, finding the little key under one of the many flowerpots in the corner and unlocking the front door. It swings open with a soft creak and she steps over the threshold into the silent house.

They all file in after her but leave her be as she slips through the unfamiliar home, brushing her fingertips along the backs of the armchairs, across the tabletop, resting on the sparse personal touches and the flowers and herbs that grow on every windowsill.

It’s not a large place and Ben wonders briefly if they’ll have to set up the tents outside despite Paige’s planned hospitality but he puts the thoughts aside as Poe claps his hands together and rubs them as he plops down into a threadbare armchair.

“I suggested we started on dinner, or at least checked if there was anything we could do to help,” Rey pipes up, “Or, if Hux is feeling particularly desperate, we could try and at least brainstorm ideas?”

Hux shakes his head. “We don’t have enough information ourselves for that. We’ll need to wait for at least Paige, if not Hue and Thanya,” he shrugs.

“Fine then, can we find something to do? I don’t want to just sit here and twiddle my thumbs until then?” Rey tries.

It’s too early to really cook, but Rose investigates the upstairs with Finn while the other take everything off the horses’ backs and let them drink and feed, reorganising their kit and doing any small repairs they can. Paige arrives soon enough, out of breath from walking the hill as fast as she can, and vanishes upstairs to wash the grime of the day away before she calls them all over to the table, taking the snacks Poe offers her and munching as she seats herself at the head, Rose to her right and Hux opposite Rose. The others squish into the other chairs and look at them expectantly.

“So let me get this straight,” Paige starts, and Ben is once again pleased by her abruptness. “You want me, with your help, to orchestrate and carry out an uprising in the space of, what, three days?”

“Maybe not three days, we don’t even know how long it’ll take us to search the Archive,” Ben explains.

Paige laughs shortly. “You could spend years looking in there. How long do you have?”

“We don’t know how Leia and Han are getting on,” Rey mumbles, “So we don’t really know.”

“No, we can figure out at least a rough timescale. Jakku is what, a month from Alderaan if you’re moving an army the size of which they will be organising,” Hux muses, “Maybe add another week either end for gathering supplies, mobilising and such like.”

“We’ve used ten days of that time to get here,” Rey continues, “And it’ll be closer to fourteen to Niima unless we really push it, which we won’t be able to, the horses will be shattered.”

“So assuming around three of our six weeks are used up, in theory we have three weeks here,” Ben finishes, “Maybe closer to two when we take any extra diversions into account.”

“Two weeks,” Paige says, looking out the window and down the slopes towards the city. “Two weeks to get you through and into the Archive, overthrow the Empire here and get you safely back out and on your way to Niima. You guys sure don’t ask for a lot, do you?”

Poe laughs. “I like you.”

“If an uprising is too much, Paige, if you think it’d be too much too soon, that’s your call to make,” Ben hastens to add. “If all goes to plan, The Emperor will fall and all the countries will be free, Hays included.”

“But,” Paige murmurs, looking across at her sister. “If the soldiers here are caught up fighting... It's less of his army that he could draw back to Niima to face you. Palptine would be fighting a war on two fronts, right?"

“Less chance of us being surrounded,” Rose agrees quietly, “Even so, Paige, if the... loss of life here is too great... if it would do more harm than good...”

Paige shakes her head, her long black hair free of the braid it had been in for work, and looks around at them all. “It will work. I know it. Like I said earlier, there is no organised Rebellion here, no structure. But that doesn’t mean if the call went out, no one would answer. Mum and Dad hear things in the mines all the time, people muttering and gossiping, people saying what they’d do if they got the chance. And it’s not idle talk either, they mean it, Dad says. It’s just that no one can make the first move.”

“But if _we_ made the first move...” Rey breathes. “If, when we come back, we gave you the signal and everything exploded at once...”

Paige nods, her eyes lighting up. “I could work with that.”

“So we have ten days from now to get to the Archive and find what we need or leave without it and hope we can manage without that edge,” Finn says, drawing circles on the table top with his finger, a trait Ben recognises as a nervous one, “And four days to help Hays and leave.”

Everyone falls silent as the gravity of what they’re proposing sinks in.

Ben feels his magic stirring in response to Rey’s next to him and he turns to look at his wife as her eyes burn.

“How do we begin?”

* * *

Their candles burn low and their voices do too as they plan, scribbling tiny maps and ideas onto the rolled-up parchment from their saddlebags. At some point during the long evening they pause to cook dinner, leaving plenty for the Ticos when they arrive home. Rey’s neck begins to ache from hunching over the table and listening to everyone’s thoughts as she mops up the last of her stew with thick buttered bread. Of all of them, she has the least experience with this kind of thinking and only really inputs some common sense when everyone else’s idealism carries them away.

Not that she minds – they’ve always worked well together in that sense, even with Ben and Hux as new additions and Paige an unknown variable. Between them all, they fill out all areas of expertise, from Hux’s military logic and Poe’s catching enthusiasm to Rose and Paige’s quiet determination and Ben’s tendency to see the worst in people.

Finn stays quiet, she notices, watching him across the table. She’s about to find some excuse to ask him to step away with her and ask if everything’s okay when -

The door creaks open.

They all freeze, but Paige stands, pushing her chair back from the table and looking towards the hallway.

“Mum, Dad?”

“Hello, sweetheart,” a woman, Thanya, says tiredly, the sound of coats being hung up and boots being unlaced quietly sifting through the suddenly silent house.

“Good day at work?” Hue calls, poking his head around the door before Paige can warn them. His easy smile stays in place, but his eyes widen in surprise.

The candles seem to flicker in response to Rey’s nervousness as Hue’s eyes dart over them all one by one, from his eldest daughter at the head of the table, the golden lights illuminating her from below, to Ben’s hulking form squished onto one of their flimsy chairs, to Rey’s wary expression, her hand half on her belt just in case this goes wrong. Until finally they land on Rose.

“Rosie?” Hue whispers.

“Hi, Dad,” Rose says, her voice shaking as she holds back tears and slips away from the others, standing in front of her father. “I missed you.”

“Oh, Rosie,” Hue chokes, his shaking hands casting a shivering shadow on the wall as he steps closer and cups her cheeks. “Thanya, come in here. Rose is home!”

A slender woman appears in the doorway, her face pale. “Rose?” The voice is full of tremulous hope.

And then Rose really does start crying. Rey can’t see it, Rose is facing away from them, but she can hear her shaking sobs as she’s folded into her father’s wiry arms, Thanya crying out and enveloping her daughter and husband in one go, her fingers smoothing over Rose’s glossy hair.

Everyone is stood, frozen, but Rey tugs at Ben’s sleeve, dragging her eyes away from the family as Paige joins them, laughing wetly. This isn’t a moment for them.

The others make their exit as quietly as they can but Rey suspects they could’ve ran out screaming and nothing would’ve disturbed the Ticos as Hue and Thanya murmur to their daughters blissfully, reunited at last.

* * *

There definitely isn’t enough space in the house for them all, so once they’re outside, Rey helps Poe puts up their tents on the only gently sloping ground behind the building, the fence keeping them out of sight of the other houses on the row.

Once they’ve set everything up, Rey heads back inside, reluctant to interrupt but wanting to double check what the plans are and if Rose is staying inside to sleep or joining Rey in her tent.

Rose looks up the moment Rey appears in the doorway and it quietens some of Rey’s concerns immediately. It was hard seeing Poe reunited with his family in Alderaan, it’s hard seeing the same with Rose now when Rey knows she will likely never get that – and that even if she does, it won’t hold any meaning when her parents are strangers to her. But Rose is still there, still always looking out for Rey and so she smiles softly.

“We’ve got the camp set up as usual,” she explains, hovering by the table but not wanting to sit down and join the four of them. Their hands are all piled together in the middle of the table, their empty bowls scraped clean and stacked t one side, sated and simply enjoying knowing the family unit is complete again. “Are you sleeping in here or coming out, just... so I know whether to secure the tent door when I go in.”

“No, no, I’ll come out, there would only be the sofa in here and no offence to Mum and Dad but our camping mats are probably more comfortable,” Rose grins.

Hue snorts and rolls his eyes in the exact same way Rose does when she knows someone else is right but doesn’t like it.

“Cool,” Rey smiles, running her hand through the tangled ends of her hair now she’s let it down from the travelling braids. Maybe Ben will brush it out for her before bed. “Cool. Well... I don’t want to intrude, sorry.”

“You aren’t intruding, Rey,” Paige promises firmly.

“If you are a friend of Rose then you are part of the family,” Thanya adds warmly. “You have helped to keep her safe, from what I’ve heard, and brought her back to us now. There is nothing to apologise for.”

Rey flushes slightly. She thinks she’s probably saved Rose from just about as much danger as she’s put her in, and the ratio isn’t likely to improve over the next few months with their plans. “Thank you.”

Hue chuckles and leans back in his chair. “I see you’ve all been busy while we were out,” he nods towards the parchment that Rose and Paige have swept onto a side table.

Rey licks her lips and nods. “Yes. Yes, we... we want to help.”

Thanya sighs and beckons Rey over. She joins them, standing next to the table. Rose’s mother wraps her hands around Rey’s, smiling at the warmth of her skin. “You don’t have to. You could go through to the Archive as planned and wait for Jakku to fall. This... is a lot of work here that you don’t need to do, and it might bring the Empire down on you. I hear the Emperor is looking for you, specifically.”

Rey looks across at the sisters – they’ve clearly filled their parents in on exactly who is staying in their garden. “Yes, it might,” she admits. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

“And if Hux were here,” Rose smirks, “He’d tell you it’s tactically to our advantage anyway.”

“Oh if _Hux_ were here,” Paige sighs and earns herself a sharp jab in the ribs from Rose’s elbow. Paige just giggles. "It was my idea, Rose!"

“Whatever your reasons for helping, we appreciate it,” Thanya promises, smiling up at Rey. “I know you and my daughters can do it.”

Thanya is beautiful, no doubt about it, but she is tired. Rey can see it in the way her face is lined from smiles but also frowns, crow’s feet from wrinkling her eyes in laughter but soft strokes across her forehead too where her eyebrows would furrow down. Her eyes are bright, but they don’t burn like Paige’s and Rose’s. They’ve been worn down.

Having felt Ben’s concerns through the bond that the people of Hays wouldn’t appreciate them barging in and starting an uprising they didn’t ask for, Rey takes Thanya’s words to heart. Her and Ben, and everything they stand for, might be enough to provide the push Hays needs to do what it needs to do. That is just as important to Rey as finding what they need in the Archive, or making it to Jakku.

Rose stands and stretches, pulling her mother’s gaze back to her as she laughs gently at her younger daughter. “We should probably get to bed, Rey. We’ve got a tonne more to do tomorrow, we’ll wake up early probably, Mum.”

“That’s fine, we’ll be leaving early anyway,” Hue shrugs, standing and stretching too, his sore muscles protesting.

Paige looks mutinous at the thought of her parents going back to the mines again and Rey gets it. They don’t deserve this. But at least they’re going to do something about it.

* * *

They rise early the next morning, waving to Hue and Thanya as the couple shoulder their tools and head back up the slopes towards the mine entrances cut into the cliffs above. Breakfast is quiet and focussed as they have one last run through of Paige’s plans and double check their timings. And then it’s time to leave.

The horses are saddled and packed and they lead them back down the zigzagging path into town. Paige stops off to tell her boss she’ll be back to help close up but the others don’t talk, too preoccupied with thoughts of how on earth they’ll make it through the city without being caught.

Retracing their steps back to the main street into the city, Rey keeps a tight grip on Artoo’s reins as they wind their way through the steady stream of people heading to work, most walking in the direction of the mountains. Ben’s thoughts are jumping all over the place, making her head spin, so she pulls away from the connection slightly, focussing instead on Rose and Paige next to her, talking under their breaths.

Ben looks back at her, sensing the distance. She smiles to reassure him, but even without feeling his thoughts, she knows the tension on her face is mirrored in his, his returning smile tight and forced.

All too soon the city gates are looming above them. The smooth stone walls stretch up to dizzying heights, a marvel of engineering. Every interlocking stone has been sanded and filed to provide no grip at all. Scaling the walls of Orwan would require serious equipment, and so the only way in is through the huge doors, guarded 24/7 on both the ground and the watch posts dotted along the top – although they’re recent additions, built by the Empire.

There is only one way in on the West Wall and currently it is manned by eight guards, lounging around with one hand on their spears and swords at all times. Their hoods have been up the whole time so Rey can’t see Paige’s facial expression but she can see the subtle nod she gives Poe, who leads them, to jumpstart their plan and, with any luck, get them inside and well on their way to the Archive on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tricky chapter - and will be a tricky section - to write. Especially in light of recent fandom discussions, I've done my best to make sure that Rey and Ben aren't white saviours in this scenario, but if anything makes you at all uncomfortable, let me know either in the comments or message me here, or on twitter at [@astroemilyy](https://twitter.com/astroemilyy). Story is not more important than real people feeling comfortable.


	6. The Rhythm of the Falls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Sorry we skipped a week, I was having a rough time and didn't have the energy or motivation to write or upload. But we're back! Yay! Hope you enjoy <3

The group spread out along the road, Paige at the front, weaving her way expertly through the people and the others dotted along behind, shadowing her movements and trying to blend in. She reaches the soldiers’ line of sight as her hood slips down, revealing her glossy hair. The moment their eyes are on her, she flashes them a smile and then – her head vanishes below the heads of the bustling crowd, tripping spectacularly, her ankle rolling to the side.

Even though they were all expecting it, Ben still flinches and forces himself not to turn to help her. She cries out loudly, drawing plenty of attention from the surrounding Haysians and, crucially, the soldiers at the gate.

Ben can see Rose’s tightly relieved smile as she darts ahead, leaving Paige behind, clutching her ankle and grimacing as she makes a fuss. The soldiers, seeing a pretty girl stuck on the floor, crowd around her, making a big show of helping her to her feet and Paige does an incredible job of whimpering and fussing, giving the others plenty of time to slip through the open gates and lose themselves in the city crowds.

Once they’re around the corner, out of sight of the guards, Ben finally relaxes – but only a little. There are still plenty of ways they could be caught.

“Okay, Paige has given me a rundown of what she knows of the patrols in this city and combined with the stuff I did in Niima, I think we stand a good chance of not seeing any other soldiers until the East Gates – that’ll be where the problem is, they’re going to want to know why we’re leaving the city that way if they catch us,” Finn explains.

They all already know this, they’ve discussed the plan so many times in the last 24 hours, but it’s reassuring to hear it again and Ben appreciates the certainty in Finn’s voice.

“So we stay here until we meet back up with Paige – she shouldn’t be too long – and then we wait for the patrol to move through.”

“And then we tail them,” Poe nods, tightening his cloak and locking his jaw.

In theory the plan is simple: follow _behind_ the patrols as they circle through each district before slipping into the next borough and the next patrol cycle, drifting through the city, taking whatever routes the soldiers do, until they reach the Eastern side where Paige will once again cause a distraction to get them through the gate and leave them to travel the rest of the way to the Archive by themselves.

In practise, however...

The wait for Paige to appear is tense. Rose doesn’t move from her spot between Poe and Hux, her eyes fixed on the light at the and of the alleyway where Paige plans to appear once she’s shaken off the soldiers looking after her.

Five minutes slip by. Then ten. Then fifteen. Rose looks pale even though there is no reason to suspect they’ve been found out.

And then a lithe figure appears, hands on her hips and sporting a very clean bandage around one ankle that she seems, funnily enough, to have no trouble putting weight on.

“Gods, they were clingy,” Paige grumbles, but she’s grinning. “Where are you headed, Miss? Can we help you get to work, Miss? Definitely new recruits if they’re saying ‘Miss’ and not just ‘you there’.”

Rose heaves a sigh of relief and throws her arms around her sister. “Thank goodness. How long does it take to bandage a fake injury, Paige?”

Paige laughs and flutters her eyelashes. “They were very attentive.”

Poe snorts and rolls his eyes. “Don’t blame you, I’d probably try and flirt with them too, just for a laugh.”

Finn whacks the back of his head lightly as they shift to the end of the alley to wait for their cue.

* * *

The rest of the trip through Orwan is stressful but passes with relative ease. There are a few instances of soldiers turning back around, forcing them to examine a shop front very studiously for a few minutes. The pinch point is the old lady who stops Rey to tell her that she reminds her of some girl on a wanted poster. Ben nearly kills her on the spot until she winks and tells Rey that _it’d be a real shame if the Empire never found that girl, wouldn’t it_.

It gives them all a boost of hope; maybe, just maybe, enough people will join them when they kick off the uprising. Maybe they can make this work.

By the time they reach the East Gate, Finn is a mess and is relieved to let Paige take over once more. He’s spent so much time agonising about the plan, over thinking the routes and his own knowledge and even Poe hasn’t been able to calm him down. It has been Rey who has managed that: she’s been by Finn’s side this whole time and her closeness seems to have helped somewhat even if he’s still exhausted by the time they pause and wait for a good opportunity to exit.

Ben suspects it’s something to do with Niima and their shared history, the part of Rey’s story that she still doesn’t talk about even if he’s gained some sense of what went down from her thoughts and emotions. He knows Poe broke her out, and Finn switched sides and helped. He knows she doesn’t like being in this city either, avoiding the guards dressed in the same uniform as those who had hurt her. He doesn’t pry – he won’t push her on it, and knows Finn wouldn’t appreciate him getting involved either. Even so, it bothers him. He’s glad they’re going to have time in the Archive to recover, even if they’re still working.

Paige shifts from her spot inspecting some fruit and Ben looks across at her. She nods.

They could just make a break for it on the horses and outrun the soldiers, but they can’t afford to be followed at all, needing all the time they can in the Archive uninterrupted and without alerting Palpatine to what they’re up to. So they’re playing dirty instead.

The gates make up the fourth side of the large and open market place edged with shops, some carts and the twisting roads that spread through the city. The ten or so soldiers are gathered around the gates looking bored. The tide of people seems to swell slightly, the square filling up. More people to potentially get hurt, but also more cover. They’ll have to take the risk.

Ben nudges Rey, who loops her arm through Finn’s and wanders across the square, their horses trailing behind, buffeted by the people pushing through. She passes a cart and approaches a shop closer to the gates. He sees her wrist flick through the bustle of people separating them but he doubts anyone else notices. The cart goes up in flames before the owner can so much as blink.

The fire spreads unnaturally quickly as Ben and the others try and push their way towards the gates. The lines of flames dart between the crowds, the sparks catching other stalls and signposts and banners, a trail of carefully controlled destruction following in their wake. Cries go up from the citizens, the frantic scrambling to escape the heat ensuing and throwing the square into chaos as the ripples of panic reach the edges and ricochet back through the crowd.

And then the mayhem spreads even faster than Rey’s fire can as the flames lick into the sky and consume a yet another cart. Ben feels every burst of magic as if it were his own, mapping Rey’s path through the square. _My clever girl_ , he thinks, realising the magic is moving in the opposite direction to her, drawing the visibly alarmed soldiers further away from the gate even as the source of their problems slips past them, Finn at her shoulder.

There is a moment when the soldiers pause, clearly unsure if they should leave their post to help. Rey responds by exploding a barrel of rice, the heat and pressure inside sending the grains flying through the air and eliciting several screams as part of the cart snaps and falls, fanning the embers even hotter. The soldiers don’t hesitate again.

Ben, Rose, Hux and Poe walk through the open gates easily even as Finn and Rey force their way through the mess and slip away, unseen.

Paige stands at the edge, her grin broad – this has worked perfectly. Now she’ll stay behind to keep the soldiers focussed on the fire long enough for the group to make it out of the city’s view. She salutes them as they jump onto their horses and kick off hastily, not wanting to waste time.

Poe returns her salute with a matching grin. They’ll be back soon.

* * *

The horses are pushed to their limit as they race away from Orwan. The soldiers will return to their post eventually and they need to be out of sight by then, a feat which is made more difficult by the fact that there is precious little cover save for the mountains on their left.

But the view of the city behind them stays still, no soldiers are sent from the gates after them so Rey can only assume that Paige managed to prolong the distraction. She feels awful leaving her behind even if that’s the plan and they’ll see her again soon enough. Rey swallows the bitter taste on her tongue as they start to climb into the mountains again. Using her magic to harm people, to ruin livelihoods, doesn’t sit well with her even if it was the best way, and combined with feeling like they’ve abandoned Paige, she knows it’ll be a while before she feels like herself again.

She stays quiet as they follow Rose’s lead, her steady hands guiding the horses along disused paths and around the edges of valleys and gentle waterfalls. The mountains here are craggier, less gentle slopes and more sudden precipices. The horses tread carefully and Rose keeps an eye out for any noises.

“The Empire used explosives to destroy the Archive’s entrance,” Rose explains when Hux gives her an odd look. “They had to use so much to destroy it that it weakened the rock surrounding the whole area. It doesn’t help that their mines web through half the mountain range by now.”

“And let me guess,” Hux mutters, “They didn’t listen to the advice of the Haysians on where was safe and where would weaken the rocks above?”

“What makes you think that?” Rose replies sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “Paige was telling me there have been more cave ins over the last few years than in the whole mining history of Hays.”

“Fucking hell,” Poe grimaces, “And we’re breaking into a whole underground temple? In said weakened mountain range?”

“The temple isn’t so much underground,” Rose smiles, turning her head towards their destination. “But sure. Effectively.”

“Great,” Poe groans.

“If it’s not underground, what is it?” Rey frowns, trying and failing to wrap her head around the scale of it all.

“You’ll see,” Rose says breathlessly. “I only wish you could have seen it before it was damaged. They blew up the rocks above it, sent them crashing down, blocking the whole entrance. It used to be beautiful.”

“It still will be,” Rey promises, “And anyway, it’s the information inside that matters, right? That’s all safe.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing the entrance got destroyed,” Ben adds, earning a slight glare from Rose.

“What do you mean, water boy?” she snaps. “It was a national treasure.”

“I think... I think what Ben means is that the Empire could’ve taken the knowledge inside and used it for evil. If Palpatine had thought of this, maybe he’d already be unstoppable,” Rey hastens to explain before a fight breaks out. Everyone is still way too stressed and strung out. “By sealing all the information inside, he’s given us a chance to defeat him. Who knows what he could’ve done if he’d looked in there.”

“And, Rose, whenever I heard about the Archive, sure, people mentioned its beauty, and the Haysian architecture,” Hux adds softly, his eyes fixed on her where she has pulled her horse to a halt ahead. “But the real value was the books. The generations of culture and writing and stories. That’s still there. In the same way that Orwan looks different now, but it’s still full of Haysians who are going to help us overthrow the Empire.”

Rose stills for a moment and then Rey sees her wipe her eyes. She wants to hug her.

“Thank you, Hux,” she whispers, swallowing hard. “We should keep moving.”

“How long until we’re there?” Finn asks.

“Fifteen minutes, maybe,” she mumbles, “To the edge of the canyon, anyway.”

That time slips away far too fast and the only sign that they’re approaching the great valley is the mounting wind that whistles through the trees and raises goosebumps on Rey’s arms. When it becomes strong enough to tug strands from their braids, Rose dismounts and Rey notices that her hands gripping the reins are trembling slightly. She slips from Artoo’s back and steps up the gentle slope towards the cliff’s edge, ignoring the path to the side that they will be taking in a moment.

It’s breathtaking. Rey has never seen anything like it. She’s used to open space and sky, the desert of Jakku provides plenty of that kind of sweeping scenery, but this is on a whole new level. The sandy rocks plummet hundreds of feet down to the floor of the canyon just inches in front of her feet, sprawling and tumbling into open space. The plateau beneath is pockmarked with boulders and holes, a pattern that doesn’t quite repeat itself. Way across the crack in the earth there is another rock face, even higher than the one they stand on now. In its sheer face there are carved pillars, delicate arches and spiralling decorations. Where there should have been great gateways into the hollowed out interior are hundreds of tonnes of piled boulders, spilling from the top levels of the structure all the way down to the bottom like a river of stone, unmoving and frozen in time.

The crashing of the great waterfalls visible further north can still be heard here like a distant ringing in Rey’s ears and her eyes are drawn to the distant spray and white water of the curtains of water that plummet distances her brain can’t even fathom and break on the rocks below with deadly force. Her gaze flows down the length of the raging river that is born of the cascades, skipping over each smaller set of falls that swirl and curve like the melody of a forgotten song. It’s enchanting and dangerous in equal parts and she swallows hard.

“Welcome to the Archive,” Rose smiles, her words caught by the wind that is funnelled through the valley and buffets them hard. Her black hair is fluttering in the breeze as she steps right up to the edge, her hand on her horse’s neck steadily, unafraid of the drop below.

“It’s beautiful,” Rey whispers. She doesn’t think her voice reaches Rose but it doesn’t matter. The words weren’t really for her.

Rey feels the other step up to the cliff edge too, Ben’s arm wrapping itself around her waist and tucking her against him, his comforting warmth and steady heartbeat keeping half her heart on the ground even as the rest is flying through the air. The pounding of the waterfall so many miles away reverberates through his pulse and Rey shivers, feeling his magic crooning in response.

But this isn’t a place only for him, she thinks. There’s something here, something under the ground, that calls to her as strongly as the water calls Ben.

“Rose?” she calls over the whistling air. “What’s in this valley?”

Rose’s grin is mischievous. “I’m glad you can feel it. The Archive was built here for many reasons, one of them being the natural defences. If you’re going to put that much knowledge in one place, it makes sense to make sure it can’t be reached easily.”

“What is it?” Ben yells, “What’s here?”

Rose laughs. “Apart from the deadly river and rocky terrain you mean?”

Ben rolls his eyes.

“You’ll see – I bet Rey can feel it, you’ll know when it’s about to happen, you both will.”

Poe whoops with excitement and runs both hands through his hair, trying and failing to fix the mess the wind has made of it. The feeling is infectious. There’s something universally thrilling about experiencing nature like this, Rey realises, something incredibly humbling and yet simultaneously electrifying about the scale of the canyon. The Archive must be at least a mile away and yet the columns are taller than half the buildings in Alderaan. The river is so far below them but the water churns and roils like it’s right in front of them. She laughs too, giddy.

And then, as if this wasn’t enough, something stirs beneath their feet, way down under the valley floor, on the flat land either side of the snaking river. Ben holds his breath. Rey strains her eyes to see, focussing in on one of the holes on the far side of the river.

Their magic strains and churns with the push and pull of the water. But it isn’t just water. There is something terrifyingly hot beneath the surface, hotter than even the whitest flames Rey has conjured. Her breath catches in her throat.

“Geysers,” she breathes.

Rose grins.

The boiling water ebbs, and flows, and ebbs, and flows, spilling over the edge of the crater once before vanishing momentarily. And then the strain is too much. The explosion is blinding, her vision – and Ben’s – almost whited out by the force of nature beneath them, the plume of scalding water fired into the sky by the pressure of the magma underground. The steam plumes and eddies around the column of water that reaches for the clouds high above, the combination of heat and liquid almost magnetic.

Rey sways on the spot as, one by one, triggered by the overflow, a constellation of geysers erupt all across the plains, each explosion another bolt of lightning energy through her nerves.

Ben feels the same, she can tell. The surging water from the distant falls, the hypnotic power behind each geyser, the way her blood roars in response.

“Holy shit,” Hux murmurs, and Rey can only silently agree as she watches, transfixed.

“We have to _cross_ that?” Finn cries, asking the real question.

“Those things could kill us,” Poe agrees, “Never mind getting the horses across that river!”

“You forget who we have with us,” Rose points out, looking across at Ben and Rey.

Rey still feels out of it, her magic flaring in response to each new rumbling of the magma deep beneath the surface. It’s a lot all at once and she blinks hard and forces herself to focus on Rose’s face.

“Yes, we can do it. I... I can work out when they’re going to go up,” Rey nods. “And together we can manage the river, I’m sure.”

Poe looks sceptical. “Rey, I love you, but only Ben can do the water magic stuff. Unless you’re going to boil the water into steam to let us through, I don’t think he can do this by himself, sweetheart.”

She grins and the edges of it are feral as she clenches and unclenches her fists, practically bouncing on her feet. “You don’t know anything, Poe. Dyad, remember?”

Ben laughs at her enthusiasm. “We realised something and we’ve been practising. We didn’t know it would be so useful so soon, but... our magic is linked, the same energy pool split across two bodies. Which means right now she can channel hers through the bond to me, effectively giving me double the power with my abilities.”

“Holy shit,” Hux mutters again, “That’s... insane.”

“So, Poe, don’t piss Rey off, or she’ll burn you alive twice over,” Rose smirks.

Rey rolls her eyes. “Either way, we can manage the river alright. The geysers are, actually, the easier part.”

“If you’re sure,” Poe says, “More because I don’t want you guys hurting yourself doing this than because I think you’d put us in danger.”

“We’re sure,” Ben says firmly, nodding once and kissing Rey’s temple. “We can do this.”

* * *

Getting down to the river valley isn’t too difficult, it just requires inching their way carefully down the steep and twisting paths that cling to the side of the mountains. But even with their extra care, they’re on the flat just as the sun clips the top of the western mountains. They won’t have much light for long this low in the valley but climbing the other side will give them some more of the day to work with – if they can get across the valley floor first, that is.

“Okay, Rey and I can feel when the geysers are about to go up but we don’t have too much warning. The water will be hot, I will do my best to cool and move it away from us if we’re too close, but we still need to try not to drift too close to any one source, alright?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Hux smirks and Rose shoves him playfully. “Are we going on horseback or not?”

“Not,” Rose says firmly. “We’ll have better manoeuvrability on our feet and if the horses get scared and bolt, we do _not_ want to be on their backs.”

“Also,” Rey shrugs, “They might have just as good intuition about these things as me and Ben. If the horse starts running from something we haven’t picked up on, I’m following the horse.”

Finn nods. “And we stick together.”

“Right. Our senses are going to have to be on high alert, but that means we can’t be scanning too far out. Stick between me and Rey and we should be able to cover you,” Ben adds, taking up his position at the front of the group. Rey is already widening their bond and sinking into the magic to allow Ben to draw what he needs if anything explodes too close to them.

It’s an exercise in trust that she didn’t know she needed, but she feels something close to fear creeping in as she realises that if Ben was _not_ on her side, he could drag all her energy into himself right now and leave her drained. Her magic is something she’s always had, even when locked underground and soaked the bone – it was always there, smouldering. The thought of it going out forever is... unimaginable.

He sends as much calming energy as he can back to her and it feels like a hand stroking her hair. Her shoulders relax slightly as she focuses. They have a job to do.

Ben steps forwards away from the end of the path and everyone follows, the horses jittery and left on long reins to give them as much freedom as they can without letting them go entirely. Rey can just about hear Rose murmuring to them, her and Finn working together to keep the animals moving as Hux and Poe keep an eye on her and Ben, guiding them while they reach out around themselves with magic and not their eyes.

It’s quiet for now. Rey can still feel the magma bubbling in the crust below but nothing is stirring near them. She realises that Ben, surrounded by so much rushing water, will probably get swamped by the feeling. Even though the geysers are more water than fire, she will be their first warning when she senses a spike in the temperature around them.

Step by step, metre by metre, they pick their way across the plains, avoiding the pools of gently steaming water previous eruptions have left behind and keeping a careful eye on all the craters.

It’s slow but steady progress and Rey relaxes further, soothed by the gentle shifting of the lava at the edges of her consciousness. Ben is on edge, the giddy speed of the river winding him tighter and tighter. She tugs a little on the bond, bringing him back from the brink, showing him something of the sleepy heat that drives all the geology of this entire valley. It helps a little, averaging out their moods.

It helps until they reach the river itself, at least. The water is vicious, the bright blue of the mountain water edged with icy white spray as it tumbles over sharps rocks and smaller falls, swirling into rapids either side of the group. The horses whinny and tug on the reins. Rey knows how they feel.

“How do you want to do this?” Rey asks nervously, shifting to stand next to Ben and wrapping her hand around his much larger wrist.

Ben looks upstream, and then down. He takes a deep breath in, his chest expanding and slowly settling as he breathes out through his nose. “I’m going to bend the water around us.”

“What do you mean?” Rey frowns.

“See there?” he smiles, extending his arm to a rock roughly in front of them that seems to be spitting foam.

She nods.

“See behind the rock, there’s a small area where the water can’t reach. Even with both our energy right now, we wouldn’t have enough to stop the water, or carry us across the current without half drowning us,” he says, his voice low in her ear. “But the river bed is solid rock, like we’re standing on now, much safer. Channelling the water either side of us while we walk across will use far less energy than anything I can think of.”

It’s clever, Rey can’t deny that, but it also means they will have to walk – with the horses – the hundred foot distance across the river with the water battling to wash them all away. And Rey can’t swim.

He feels the spike of panic and kisses her forehead, cupping her cheeks and smiling. “You really think I’m going to let anything happen to you.”

She shakes her head reluctantly but despite all the work, all the baths, all the paddling in Alderaan’s shallow lakes, she still doesn’t like the idea of being surrounded by water. Especially not water as angry as this.

“You won’t be powerless, Rey,” Ben promises, reading her mind. “Think about it this way – even if it’s not you doing it, your magic is going to be controlling this water too. _You’ll_ be controlling it with me.”

She shivers and squares her shoulders. “I can do this.”

“Of course you can, sweetheart,” he says softly. “You can do anything.”

She nods and looks up at him. She can do anything. “Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

Ben explains the plan to the others carefully and succinctly. Rose eyes Rey nervously when Ben mentions walking through the water but Rey just smiles back – _she can do this_ – and continues watching Ben. The impassioned way he’s talking, the sheer confidence he has in his abilities and their magic, is comforting.

Finn is going to stay next to her, he announces. He doesn’t say why out loud even though everyone knows (with the exception of maybe Hux unless Rose has told him) and she’s grateful. She hooks her arm through his and holds Artoo’s reins tightly with her other hand. Nothing is going to happen to them. Nothing is going to happen. She repeats the mantra to herself over and over.

And then Ben steps up to the river’s edge, his boots just brushing the edge of the water. Together, they open the bond and she feels it, the chanting in their blood as he begins to get a feel for the water and slowly, gradually bends it to his will.

They all approach the water as Ben curves the rabid current around the first small area. Poe, chin high, steps onto the damp river bed first, turning back to help the others down the small dip, Finn guiding Rey even as she works to control her shaking because she knows if she loses it, Ben will lose her half of the magic and this will all go very _very_ wrong.

“You’ve got this, Rey,” Finn promises warmly, his arms tightly around her.

She plants her feet firmly on the river bed as Ben pulls some of the water back round behind them, sealing them in the middle of the tonnes of liquid and forcing them forwards. She cannot turn back now. He works slowly, unable to focus on anything except maintaining the split in the river that curves around them before tripping over itself to merge downstream of their group. The tear drop shaped bubble of dry land flickers at the edges, their boots are splashed with freezing mountain water, but it holds.

Rey sucks in air through her mouth and forces it out through her nose, wrapping herself in magic and Finn’s arms as they move step by step across the river. The churning water bleeds into Ben’s breathing, Ben’s heartbeat, every fibre of both of their beings. And yet slowly, lovingly, she feels Ben secure his control over the deadly current and the security washes over her, lapping at the frayed edges of her lungs.

She reaches for the heat below and feels it stirring. She keeps moving. He won’t let anything happen to her.

“You’re doing so well, Rey,” a voice calls. She thinks it’s Rose. She doesn’t want to open her eyes to find out.

“Just a few more steps,” Finn adds. It’s definitely Finn now because she feels him tighten his arms around her, leaning over to steady Artoo who is shifting nervously next to them.

She nearly trips on the step up out of the river but then there are more hands on her, Poe and Hux, hauling her up the rocky bank onto the flat and blessedly dry plateau. She can still hear the pounding of the water but it’s quieter now.

The other hands vanish and are replaced by Ben’s shaking ones as he lets the last of the water flood back into place and pulls her into his arms where she sits on the floor, her fingers spread out, digging into the soil.

“You did so well,” he murmurs, his hands brushing her hair as he struggles to catch his breath. “Look at how well you did, sweetheart. You did it, I’m so proud of you.”

Her breath catches in her throat and she curls into his arms, exhaustion setting in as the bond fades to normal and all that is left is the feeling of having ran a marathon and fought a battle and climbed a mountain all in one. She imagines Ben is even worse.

“Can we... can we stay here? Just for half an hour,” she whispers, Ben’s hand running down her spine and sending shivers through her body even through the dark red tunic she’s wearing. “I need... a moment.”

“Of course,” he soothes, “Of course.” His head tilts up to look at the others. “Rey wants to rest here for a bit? Just until we’ve had a chance to catch our breaths.”

Rose doesn’t even hesitate in pulling down a blanket for them both from the terrified looking Artoo and tucking it around Rey’s frame in Ben’s lap. “We might as well eat here. It’s been a long day.”

She feels Ben lean back, tucking his hands behind his head before Rose wedges a pillow under it with a quick grin. And then he’s asleep, out like a light. Rey giggles with nervous relief as she cosies up to him, her own eyelids heavy as the sound of the river shuddering behind them and the muffled clang of cooking pots lull her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come follow me on Twitter! [@annareginar](https://twitter.com/annareginar)


	7. The Blood You Bleed Is Just The Blood You Owe

The six of them stand around the base of the rockfall, craning their necks to look up at the tonnes and tonnes of boulders that stand between them and the Archive.

“There used to be steps up here, I think you can just about see them,” Rose points out, her arm angled high above.

Rey’s first thought is that the steps must’ve been exhausting to climb, but she supposes she’s saying that off the back of crossing the river and continuing to navigate through the last of the geysers. She’s already drained.

“How the fuck do we get through all of this?” Poe says, sounding the closest to defeated Rey has ever heard him. “This needs some serious equipment, more than we have.”

Rose had made certain they’d packed some climbing gear – ropes, picks and spikes for their shoes – when they’d left Alderaan, clearly knowing they’d need something more substantial than determination to get into the hollowed halls, but Rey isn’t sure it’ll stand up to this. This is... a lot.

“Nah, we can do this,” Finn says, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. He hands his horse’s reins to Poe and hauls himself up the first boulder. He stands up and puts his hands on his hips. “One down, a thousand more to go.”

Rose laughs and shakes her head. “Proud of you, man. But we might need a more structured plan than just ‘climb and see what happens when we get to the top’.”

Rey tips her head to the side, trying to think about this logically. She gives up quickly and turns to Hux, who is the most logical person here. “Any ideas?”

He smirks slightly. “You know me so well.”

“Do you have any ideas though or are you just basking in the compliment?” Rey smirks back.

“Oi,” he says, trying and failing to sound offended. “I do have one idea. It’ll show us the easiest way in, but I haven’t figured out how to actually _get_ in.”

“Well at least that’s half the problem,” Ben shrugs, folding his arms across his chest. “Fire away.”

Finn hops back down from the rocks and dusts his hands off as they form a loose circle, Hux meeting Ben’s eyes.

“It largely depends on how tired His Royal Highness is,” he says dryly, watching Ben’s eyebrow arch. “If he can, I suggest pulling a tonne of water up to the top and letting it trickle through – you’d be able to feel its path, right?”

“If I focussed,” Ben begins to nod, seeing where Hux is going with this.

“So you tell us the quickest route through and we focus our efforts together on that spot rather than moving rocks randomly.”

“Some of those boulders, not even all of us together could lift,” Rose says sceptically.

“No, but then we find the next easiest spot. If we keep the horses well away from the bottom, we should be fine to just get them rolling and let gravity do the rest.”

The others glance around at each other but it’s already clear they’ll give it a go. They have no other ideas. Finn shrugs and squints back up towards the top of the rockslide.

“Sure,” Rey says firmly, pushing her tiredness away. One last push, like always, one more step and then she can rest. “We can do this.”

* * *

Finn and Rose lead the horses a good distance away to keep them safe from any potential falling rocks, leaving the others to begin the climb. It’s slow and laborious and even Rey, who rarely gets overheated, is dripping with sweat before they’re even half-way up.

Ben offers to keep their water gourds topped up but they turn him down and ration it instead, knowing they’ll need the last of his energy when they reach the summit. Rose and Finn catch up to them as they take a break and then they push onwards, helping each other up the larger rocks or picking paths around them, balancing on precarious piles and testing each step for safety before stepping out.

Rey keeps her head down and focusses on each placement of her foot, feeling the churning heat of the magma being left behind with each metre climbed. She’s not afraid of heights, but she doesn’t look back and she doesn’t look up, not wanting to see how much further they have to go.

Poe is next to her, panting heavily as he grips Rose’s hand and lifts her up the rock they’ve just scrambled up themselves.

Rose bends over, hands on her hips, to catch her breath as she grimaces at Rey. Rey laughs weakly and shakes her head.

“I thought I was in shape,” Rey protests. “I guess I thought wrong.”

“It’s okay, we’re allowed to be huffing when even this absolute brick of a man is struggling,” Poe grins, nodding over towards where Ben is glaring at him, his chest heaving.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hux laughs, “Look where we are.”

Rey turns and follows his finger. Her already pounding heart stutters in her chest: they are only a few metres below the very top. They’re here. She spins slowly on the spot and looks down at the rugged slope they’ve climbed. The sun is skimming the mountains on the far side of the valley where they arrived earlier in the day and the horses are tan coloured specks on the floor, grazing on the grass that has flourished in the sheltered corner of the canyon.

“Ben?” Hux calls across to him. “You’re up.”

* * *

Watching Ben work is magical both literally and otherwise. Rey cannot help but admire the shimmering water he draws from nothing, forming it as ice and shifting it back to liquid before he lets it fall, threading its way through the landslide and leaving the rocks stained dark in its wake. Remembering the way he used to be, unable to do anything more than lash out in anger, and seeing the steady control he utilises now, she smiles as she crouches to rest, watching him. She nudges energy towards him as an offering but he doesn’t need it.

Instead, she uses the bond to tap into his thoughts, feeling the way his consciousness follows the water down through the cracks and spaces between the rocks, the way he pulls it round, trying route after route.

He continues in silence for at least ten minutes as the other snacks and rehydrate. Rey sits with him in vigil, refusing to drink until he can rest too.

She feels it when he’s done, the satisfaction rolling off him in waves as he pulls the water up and back through a spot just to the right of them, double checking. Ben looks across at her and grins. She grins back.

“He’s done it,” she calls.

Ben drops the water and, to make it easier for them in a moment, dries the rocks as he sits down heavily. He takes the water flask that Rey offers him and accepts the proud kisses she scatters across his cheeks with a low chuckle.

“I _think_ I’ve done it. I’ve found the easiest spot for us, but it’s still debatable if we can get through.”

“I don’t care,” Rey declares, finally digging into her food. “You did it!”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he snorts.

The others pack their things up and Poe dusts his hands off. They look towards Ben for guidance.

“Just there, by the reddish rock. It’s pretty much vertical which is why I figured it’d be easier, we can lower ourselves straight down,” he shrugs, lifting Rey off his lap and standing while she huffs half-heartedly.

“You good to go right now?” Poe checks, raising one eyebrow.

Ben smiles. “Sure. We can get this over with and give ourselves as much time inside as we can.”

“In which case,” Hux says, taking up his position above the rock, ready to push. “We’ve got a boulder to shift.”

They clear their things away and sling the backpacks on to keep it all with them in case this goes badly and then they begin. The first rock goes easily, crunching over the smaller ones and tumbling down the mountain. Rose whoops with satisfaction and points to the small but noticeable hole they’ve made.

“We did that!” she grins, “We’re doing it!”

Ben shrugs. “There are definitely larger ones than that, but we’ll see.”

The next few are slower – in order to make progress down, they have to clear a larger area around the gaps to stop other rocks falling back in – but steadily they are making a dent. The light is slowly fading but the air is still bright and crisp, the river far below still throwing up spray and the enormous falls to the north wafting damp air across, coating them in mist now there’s less sun to dry them off.

Ben hauls the last rock out of the way just as the circle of the sun hits the line of mountains, scattering golden rays of afternoon sun across the earth like light through a prism. The hole in front of them is just wide enough for them all to squeeze through, dropping away to the inside of the Archive that has been sealed from the world for so long.

The rocks have partially filled the entrance too, the wave of earth reaching past the first line of pillars that had been the outside, and nearly to the second, smaller row that leads to the inside of the Archive and the rooms contained there. That’s all Rey can see, the only light source being the occasional crack in the rock throwing threads of light through the gloom and highlighting random details.

Behind her, Rey can hear Rose scrambling to gather their climbing equipment, laying out the loops of rope and picks onto the flattest rock and assessing the situation.

“Can I get another look?” she asks, and Rey and Ben move back for her.

Before she’d left Hays, Rose had spent plenty of time in the mountains, be it helping in the mines when needed, or exploring the area around them. Most Haysians know their way around the rocks with practised ease, and Rose is no different. She’s a little out of practise now, she’s admitted that herself, but she knows infinitely more than the rest of them.

“Alright, this doesn’t actually seem too bad,” she announces cheerfully, “The drop isn’t as bad as I thought, so as long as we’re careful and go down heaviest first so there’s enough of us up here to catch it if the lines slip, we’re good.”

“So Solo is up first?” Hux drawls.

“Don’t tease him,” Rey pouts, “It’s _muscle_.”

“Sure, Rey,” Hux smirks and grins across at Ben who merely rolls his eyes. “It’s muscle.”

“Rey would know, she sees it often enough,” Finn joins in, smiling innocently.

“I will drop you down this hole,” Rey warns. “Don’t think I won’t.”

Everyone laughs at her furious expression and Ben loops one arm around her waist, tugging her braids affectionately.

“Either way, sweet cheeks, you’re going down first,” Rose grins as she prepares the ropes, looping them into knots and slips that Rey can only stare at in awe. “Poe, can you secure this into the ground for me?”

He salutes her and Finn helps him wedge the spike into another tiny gap, tying the ropes around it while Rey and Hux do the other one. Rose drops the two ropes down into the hole. It’s impossible to see if its long enough so she hands Ben another one just in case and he hooks it around one arm as he listens to her detailed instructions on how to lower himself using the slip knots.

Rey worries at her lip until Finn slings his arm over her shoulders and smiles. “He’ll be okay, won’t he?”

“Course,” he nods, “If he falls he’ll just conjure up a wave and surf down to safety.”

“Surf?” Rey frowns, looking across at him.

“You’ve never...?” Finn says, eyes wide. “Okay, when we do that post-victory celebration beach trip that Poe won’t shut up about, he can teach you to swim and _I’ll_ teach you to surf.”

“You are from the coast then?” Rey smiles, watching her friend’s cheerful expression.

“Born and raised in the best part of Jakku, until Palpatine dragged me inland,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. He visibly forces away painful memories. “But forget him – you’re going to _love_ surfing! Handy having a husband who can magic you up some beginner waves.”

“I still don’t know what it _is_ ,” Rey beams, “But it sounds fun, even if the ocean is more water than I prefer.”

“Oi, you two,” Rose beams, “Quit yapping and come and help me lower this lump!”

“I resent all the implications that I weigh too much,” Ben says peaceably, “Rey is right, it is mostly muscle. And I’m tall.”

“Sure,” Rose and Hux say at the same time.

He snorts and hooks his feet into the loops of rope, looking across at Rey. “Here we go I guess.”

And then he’s going, inching himself down the ropes with each pass of his hands over the knots Rose has carefully constructed, vanishing into the darkness.

* * *

Ben hits the floor, dropping the last few feet onto the uneven surface. The rough hole he’s entered through is far above but he’s made it and he’s back on solid ground. “I’m down!” he calls and Rose whoops, dragging the ropes back up once he’s detached himself.

It’s then a waiting game as the others are lowered down one by one, Poe followed by Finn, Hux clinging to the ropes and looking pale even in the little light they have. Then Rey, who conjures a flame to sit in her hands, illuminating the small space around them with a cheery, crackling light. And finally Rose, dropping with ease and reminding them all cheerily that she’s been doing this since she could walk.

Rose sets up the ropes to allow them to shimmy back up later on, and then turns to them, her round face glowing with happiness. “Where do we want to go first?” she breathes, her eyes skipping along the sweeping entrance hall and the barest glimpses of bookshelves right at the edge of Rey’s sphere of light.

* * *

Ben can feel the heat of Rey’s flames as she contains them into several little spheres that float above their heads and light up the stacks of books and spiralling staircases carved from the rock that weave through the cavernous space up to the higher levels. The orbs give them enough light to explore by but they throw everything into sharp relief, the light bright and red but the shadows dark and creeping. He almost shivers.

It’s eerily silent, cobwebs clinging to the furniture and thick layers of dust gathering on the stair rails, not even the perfect tomb the Empire created keeping out the advance of time.

Ben knows they’re expecting to find bodies – the Archivists were buried alive when the Empire brought down the mountain over the entrance – and it’s why he’s leading, keeping Rey tucked in just behind him. She doesn’t need to see it if it’s messy.

Mapping out the ground floor alone takes an hour at their best guess. It’s daunting to say the least. They only have limited time before they’ll have to go and face Palpatine, armed with the information they need or not. They climb the staircases, pleased that the explosion seemingly hasn’t damaged them at all, and begin again on the second floor.

They make it deep into the second level, right towards the back of the Archive’s excavated rooms, when they spot it, the section on Magical Lore. It’s a sprawling and expansive section, marked out by the signs at the tops of the bookshelves and Rey brushes past Ben and runs her fingers over the books eagerly.

“There are so many,” she breathes, stirring the dusty air.

“Too many,” Hux adds, “How are we supposed to narrow this down?”

“There should be subsections,” Ben points out, eyeing the shelves and pointing, “Here, see?”

Poe dumps his rucksack on the grimy table in the centre of the area, bookshelves spanning out around them like a labyrinth, the dark and narrow spaces between stretching into the darkness. “Let’s get started then. Look for the subsections we think might be helpful, grab books that look promising, reconvene here.”

Rey looks up at the ceiling and turns slowly on the spot. “There has to be a better way to light this place up. How did they keep it bright?”

Rose shrugs as she wipes the table down, wrinkling her nose up at the dirt and cobwebs that cling to the surface. “It was probably mostly from the big entrance, it used to be all open, remember?”

“No, there has to be something more,” Rey continues, spotting a ladder leaning in a corner. “Lanterns, wall mounted torches, something. What did they do in the evening?”

She’s tired as she pulls herself up the ladder and then hauls herself onto the top of the bookshelf, surveying the bookcases that now serve as a path for her. Her fiery orbs hover in the air around her, giving her the air of an avenging angel as she rests her hands on her hips.

“Watch yourselves just in case,” she calls down to the others and then, grinning from ear to ear, she punches her fist upwards.

From her knuckle erupts a plume of flames like a warning flare, the heat searing the air and making her laugh with exhilaration. Rey knows she’s being dramatic, but after a whole day of travel, reining in her magic and funnelling it into Ben, overcoming fears and pulling herself up rock after rock after rock, she wants to let it out.

The fireball lights up the arching ceiling as it soars into the air, lighting up the whole floor like a comet in the night sky. As it burns, Rey twists it around, sending it arching around the enormous room, scanning the walls for rivets, old torches that need reigniting, anything.

Spotting the brackets and praying there’s still enough fuel left to catch the flames, she focuses and ignites them with the heat from the flames she’s still controlling. One by one, the torches burst to life, the noise of the oil lighting and sucking in air sending whispers around the circumference of the overhead space. The warren of bookshelves, tables and armchairs is suddenly lit by a golden, gently flickering wash of light and as Rey dissolves the fireball, she’s grinning to herself.

She turns on the spot and shrugs at Rose, who is laughing.

Energised, she hops down lightly and brushes her hands together. “Where do we start?”

* * *

Now they have light to work by, it’s relatively quick to find and mark the shelves that will be useful with scraps of fabric wedged under books. They work quietly, winding their way through the bookcases until they all reach the far corner, out of fabric and certain they’ve marked all the right sections.

They pause then to drink deeply and unroll the bedding on the floor around the table. Rose and Hux venture outside to fetch the rest of the things they’ll need to camp here for the next however long and check on the horses.

Rey gives Rose a funny look as they head off, waving cheerily at the others who seem oblivious, but Rose just waggles her eyebrows and blows a kiss.

Turning back to the shelves, Ben wraps his arms around Rey and kisses the top of her head. She smiles and leans back against him, happy despite the amount of work they have to do.

“How are you feeling?” she asks quietly, tipping her chin up and sinking into the bond for a moment, enjoying the silence that’s only punctuated by the quiet shuffling of books on the shelves as Finn and Poe begin collecting and flicking through the pages.

“Tired, but just mentally, not physically. Although a little bit of that too I suppose,” he grins.

“I get that. I’m very tired on both fronts,” she laughs. “We should help the others. Or you should help and I can... organise.”

Rey can’t read. Correction, Rey can read individual letters and some simple words, but anything beyond that, or anything with awful handwriting – and these books _all_ have ancient cramped text – and she begins to struggle. She never learned as a child and it hasn’t been high on her list of priorities since then. She wishes she’d practised more back in Alderaan.

Ben knows this, of course, and they’ve figured out that she can at least flick through and organise the books the others pull from the shelves and help that way. She hates feeling stupid, hates feeling like she’s holding them back, but this is a good compromise. She supports them in other ways, as demonstrated by the light they’re working by.

Rose and Hux return out of breath and weighed down by the rest of their things and spend a good twenty minutes lying flat on their backs on the cool stone floor recovering as Rey chats to them while piling the books up according to how likely they are to have what they need.

They eat sitting cross legged on the floor and chatting quietly. The books remain on the table in the neat piles Rey has created. They’re not looking at them yet, giving themselves one last hour before they start straining their eyes and burning the midnight candle to find a way to defeat Palpatine.

And then they can put it off no more. They’re refuelled and mostly rested, their things are ready for when they crash into bed later, the lights are still burning strong as Rey maintains them. It’s time to put their heads down.

Poe and Ben drag some extra chairs around the table. Rey double checks the page numbers and hands out the most important books and then starts to wash up while she lets the others read.

It’s immediately clear it’s awful work: she finishes drying the dishes by passing her heated hands over them and tucks them back into their bags and already by the time she’s done that, Rose’s head is in her hands as she squints at a page and Ben is hunched over and skimming over pages and pages of text, his eyes flitting back and forth as he tries to read as fast as he can.

She’s _almost_ glad they’re not expecting much of her but she checks the lights are burning merrily and picks up her own book, the one with the neatest writing and (hopefully) least complicated words.

Silence falls on the party and the hours begin to trickle away.

* * *

One by one, the others retire for the night, rubbing their eyes and yawning as they stretch cramped muscles. Rose goes first, being wrestled onto a padded bench in the corner that’s just long enough for her and no one else. Hux, exhausted from climbing up the mountain of boulders twice, lasts only ten minutes longer before bundling into his sleeping bag too, his hair rumpled and tangled from where he’s been running his hands through it all night.

Poe groans in frustration and lets his forehead thud against the wooden table half an hour later and is forced to give in by Finn who goes with him, the pair of them tucking themselves half behind some more shelves to have a semblance of privacy.

Rey joins Ben at the table and tucks her feet under her body on her chair, running her finger along the words as she mouths them slowly to herself, occasionally sounding the words out under her breath.

Ben holds the page of his book open with one hand, the other arm resting on back of her chair, brushing her neck in a way that would be extremely distracting if she had the energy to think about it. Instead it’s soothing, keeping her awake with each shiver down her spine.

“Found anything yet?” she asks after a while, rubbing her eyes and leaning back, playing with his fingers where his hand rests on her lap.

Ben shakes his head and brushes his hair out of his eyes. “Not really. But this one is looking promising. How’s yours going?”

Rey makes a small noise in the back of her throat and pushes the book away, disgusted. Ben chuckles softly.

She sips at her water and smiles, eyes darting around their space. They land on Rose on the bench, her arm hanging off the side as she sleeps, fingertips resting just above where Hux’s hand is tucked by his head. She blinks.

“Did they...”

Ben looks across and chokes. “Oh wow. I did _not_ see that coming.”

“You didn’t?” she teases, “Bless you.”

“Go to bed, sweetheart,” Ben grins, leaning over and kissing her temple. “You must be exhausted.”

“Only if you stop too,” she smiles, “Think about it... The others are all asleep, we _kinda_ have the place to ourselves...”

Ben stands quickly, the chair scraping noisily against the stone floor and Rey giggles, clapping her hand over her mouth as Hux stirs in his sleep at the sound.

“We won’t if you keep doing that, though,” she adds thoughtfully.

He just huffs and scoops her up easily. “Shush, it’s bedtime.”

She muffles her laughter against his shoulder as he carries her carefully over to their sleeping mats, covering her face in soft kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come follow me on twitter! [@annareginar](https://twitter.com/annareginar)


	8. Weeping In A Sunlit Room

The days and nights blur together without a view of the sky at all times. They all work their way through the first stack of books until Poe shuts the back cover of the very last one with a resigned shake of his head.

“That’s not all the books is it?” Rey asks, the words tumbling from her lips nervously. They have no more information than when they started, they can’t be done yet.

“No, there’s plenty more where they came from,” Ben promises, brushing his hand over her hair loose down her back, the damp ends curling slightly from the quick wash he’d given her earlier. “We should grab a few more stacks.”

“Let’s go,” Finn nods, his jaw jumping slightly.

The tension evident in his expression nudges Rey’s memory and she moves away from Ben, smiling at Finn. “We can get the ones from the corner?”

Finn looks slightly suspicious of her enthusiasm – collecting the books is hardly a fun task – but he smiles back and nods. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll get the rest,” Ben adds, poking Hux’s shoulder and nodding his head in the opposite direction. “Here we go again.”

Rey leads Finn away but she doesn’t speak until they’re in the far corner, well out of earshot of all the others just in case. There, she turns to him and puts her hands on her hips.

He quirks an eyebrow up at her furrowed brow, mimicking her and putting his own hands on his waist. “What?”

“Something is up with you. It has been for a while. And... I think you should stop keeping it bottled up,” Rey says firmly.

“That’s an assumption and a half,” Finn scoffs, turning to the bookshelves and looking for the fabric markers left on the useful books, sliding them from the shelves carefully, dusting them off as he goes.

“No, it’s... intuition!” Rey huffs. “You’ve been mentioning your home and then clamming up for hours afterwards. You’ve been _crazily_ determined to find this information – which is good, don’t get me wrong – but it’s... worrying me. You’re my friend, Finn, I’m _worried_ about you.”

Finn’s eyes narrow and he opens his mouth, about to snap, when the expression passes and his gaze drops to the floor as he leans his forehead against the sturdy wood of the bookshelves. His eyes flutter closed and he sighs quietly.

“Talk to me?” she whispers, moving over to him and resting her hand on the shelf next to him, not quite brave enough to reach out and touch him. “I’ve not been the best either, I’ve been... so focussed on Ben, on everything else. I’m sorry.”

It’s hard to say but she knows she needs to.

Finn’s shoulders lift slightly and he turns to look at her, leaning heavily against the books. “Going back to Jakku is just a lot. I’m sure you of all people get that. Rose probably understands too, but... Hays was a happy place for her, Jakku was _never_ happy for you, and hasn’t been for me for a long time.”

Rey watches silently, having learned from Ben that sometimes holding your tongue is better, that just listening achieves more than asking questions.

“I know we’re going back to do something good, to hopefully end all of it, but... I was a soldier there, Rey. I was, even unknowingly, helping keep you locked up. Helping Palpatine. It’s just hard, you know? To come to terms with that. I fled with you and Poe for a reason.”

She swallows. “I have never blamed you, not for a single second, Finn.”

“I know that,” he said earnestly, “I really do. But I blame me. Even while I know I didn’t have a choice – it was join up or be arrested for resisting – it still doesn’t sit right with me. And it doesn’t sit right with me that we’re going to have to fight his army, either. Because I know I would’ve been one of the men you were fighting if I hadn’t ran into you two.”

She nods slowly and watches him more, noticing the tension in his shoulders and the look in his eyes. “Maybe we can figure something out? If enough soldiers are like you, if enough soldiers would welcome the chance to surrender, to switch sides...”

His eyes brighten for the first time in a while and Rey feels something loosen in her chest. “Think about it! We could give them a chance to lay down weapons or come and help us. It’s better than nothing!”

Finn pushes himself off the shelves and straightens up, nodding slowly. “It’s not... perfect. But it’s an idea. We could suggest it anyway, Ben is more likely to listen if you bring it up.”

“He doesn’t _only_ listen to me,” Rey protests, rolling her eyes, but she knows Finn is at least somewhat right.

“Sure, he doesn’t only listen to you,” Finn teases, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly.

Rey grins back and shrugs. “Like you don’t also have Poe wrapped around your little finger.”

She’d hoped mentioning Poe would help but Finn’s face seems to crumple again and she looks aghast. “Woah, Finn, what?!”

“He doesn’t get this stuff. Why I feel so awful, and why talking about home is so hard,” Finn admits, needing to do something with his hands and resorting to grabbing more books mechanically. “He’s asked too, but I couldn’t even begin to explain and I just _know_ he doesn’t understand.”

“He’s doing this because it’s right,” Rey nods, following his logic immediately. She feels the same way with Ben. Her and Rose and Finn, they’ve felt the Empire’s wrath first-hand, in so many different ways. Ben is linked, thanks to Snoke, and their bond helps him understand the complicated web of her emotions, but it isn’t the same as lived experience. Poe has none of that, neither does Hux. There are several different divides in the group despite their love for one another, and this is one of them – the oppressed and the heroes.

Because even with the best intentions, Poe, Hux and Ben have never lived under the Empire’s rule. They’ve never felt the creeping danger and subjugation. They’ve never been prisoners with no way out, not like this.

“To him, it’s easy,” Finn continues, “We go in, there’s a big battle, we kill Palpatine and free Jakku, everyone lives happily ever after. He doesn’t know why I want to see Niima raised to the ground, but also preserved. He doesn’t see why killing the Emperor doesn’t fix everything.”

“How could he,” Rey whispers, her hand sliding into Finn’s and squeezing tightly. Finn squeezes back.

“Killing the Emperor doesn’t undo what happened to you,” Finn mumbles. “It doesn’t give us back our childhoods. It doesn’t make me remember my parents. It doesn’t fix the poverty and the despair and the decimated ways of life, the lost heritage and lost _lives_.”

Rey feels hot tears sliding down her cheeks. Killing Palpatine has always been personal for her – for what was done to her, for what was done to Ben – but she’s only just beginning to really understand the scale of what they’re attempting. Finn, Rose, Paige, all of Hays, her own parents, her way of life, the thousands of servants and prisoners and stolen children groomed into soldiers in Niima alone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. The two words feel hopelessly insufficient in the face of what she’s learning – she isn’t the only one who lost her family, who doesn’t remember them and can’t imagine how she’ll ever find them again. But it’s enough for Finn: his skin is also damp with tears as he folds her into his arms and holds her tightly, the two of them standing silently together as they try and figure it all out.

“Finn?” she says against his chest, taking a deep breath.

He just makes a little noise in response, tucking her head under his chin.

“I think we can do it,” she admits tentatively, looking up at him. “Even if we have to accept that some things are gone forever – I don’t think people will ever live like I did again, the knowledge is lost – we can at least _free_ Jakku, give people the chance?"

“I think we can do it too,” he smiles weakly, wrinkling his nose up slightly to make her laugh. “But maybe... nothing’s really gone for good.”

“I like that,” Rey says softly, her chest still tight but her ribs rising and falling steadily with each breath she forces herself to take. She slips out of his arms to gather up the books they’ve grabbed. “We can work with that.”

* * *

They return well after Ben and Hux, and Poe gives Finn a quick look when they return, knowing something has gone down – be it good or bad.

Books sorted and stacked, they fall reluctantly into the same rhythm, everyone reading, Rey struggling through the unfamiliar words and giving up to make warm drinks and add finished books to the growing piles of useless tomes.

Her head hurts from trying to decipher the words even if she feels she’s starting to make some progress. She leans against Ben’s chest and listens to the thudding of his heart as Poe chatters aimlessly across the table as they work.

When she grows bored again, she tunes in and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

“I know my parents will want us to go back to Alderaan,” Poe says earnestly, leaning forwards in his chair, his eyes fixed on Finn even though he’s talking with Hux. “Obviously it’s not just my call, but I’ve been away for a long time – our fleeting visit before didn’t really count.”

Hux nods and runs his fingers through his hair where it’s grown longer than Rey is used to seeing it. “I imagine I’ll head back too. Officially I’m still part of the Alderaanian military, under His Royal Highness’s command,” Hux chuckles, nodding towards Ben who smirks slightly. “I’m sure Han and Leia will be using us to help out _somewhere_.”

“We’ll find somewhere in the city, for sure,” Poe beams, shoulders turned towards Finn. Rey has a horrible sneaking suspicion that Poe overheard some of their conversation earlier. While Poe is usually boisterous, and not exactly known for subtlety, this is... something else. “Or stay in Jakku, whatever. I don’t mind.”

“Your parents were Royal Guard in their youth, right?” Hux grins.

“Right,” Poe smiles, “It’s how I knew Ben as a kid, although we weren’t too close. It is how I got roped into this whole rebellion stuff though.”

Rey tries to tune it out, she really does. After talking with Finn, the memories of Jakku are swimming too close to the surface for her comfort. Any mention of family and parents hits her like a splinter, digging deeper as Poe continues talking. Because this was _exactly_ what her and Finn were saying – Poe means well, but her and Finn can never return, not to the life they had before. Her parents sold her to the Empire – or abandoned her. Either way, they gave up on her.

She’s just about to push her chair back and make an excuse to leave when Ben freezes behind her, his arm snaking around her waist and pulling her close to him.

“I’ve found it,” he croaks, his voice cutting across their casual conversations with the gravity of a black hole. “I think I’ve found the answer.”

Poe stops talking. Hux freezes too and Rose scrambles up from her sofa, darting to stand by Finn, who looks ashy with dread. Rey lets out a little choking sound as she twists in his arms, glancing down at the page of writing in a font as frantic as the emotions surging from Ben, swamping her with a sickening mixture of hope and dread.

“Read it,” Rose breathes, flitting around the table to sit Rey down, her hands warm on her shoulders, grounding her to the little circle of her friends and Ben, his lips dry and cracked as he begins to read, faltering over the words.

“There exists many types of magic that one could not – and should not – try to understand fully,” Ben begins, his voice raspy. Rey knows rationally that she’s tired and her brain is making things up – his throat is dry, he’s stressed, it’s the weird shape of the room – but the way his voice echoes in the cavernous space, hissing the s’s and staccato at the t’s is sinister and not like his usual warm voice at all.

“Even the purest forms – elemental magic, dyads, spirit guardians, mostly gone from this world – are not to be understood by anyone, even those who experience it. If it’s knowledge on these you seek, I wish you luck. It’s rare but worthwhile. If you seek the opposite – leeching magic, that which aims to harm, steal, deform – then I have very little to say except a warning. Those who try to replicate magic for their own purposes have rarely succeeded, and, without exception, die horribly.”

Rey shivers at the thought of trying to mess with magic – Ben’s story about his grandparents comes to mind.

“Take a dyad. Two life forms, both gifted with whatever magic the world decides it needs to restore balance. But the key: they are connected. One life form, split across two bodies, the give and take of energy like the ebb and flow of tides. It is beautiful, wonderous – but it implies something dark.” Ben falters and swallows hard. This is the bit that’s relevant.

“Life energy can be transferred from one body to another, shifted between souls – if one were so inclined, who is to say that it couldn’t be twisted? _Taken_ , rather than received? Stolen, rather than shared. I don’t wish to write any more down, even for the purpose of archiving important knowledge, but I think, if someone were monstrous enough, it could be done. A leech in the magic of this world, regenerating themselves at the expense of others.”

Ben looks up, visibly shaken. “The entry ends there. He hasn’t written any more.”

* * *

The others seem mildly confused, working their way around the wording and the magic, but Rey seems to understand intuitively. Ben turns to look at her, shaking under Rose’s steady hands, vibrating with horror.

Something flashes across her eyes, something awful and tragic and beyond Ben’s comprehension. And then she fractures, her face crumpling as she yanks herself away from Rose and flees, the sound of a choked sob reaching his ears.

Everyone moves at once: Rose lunges to grab her arm but misses, Rey moving faster than Ben has ever seen her; Finn lets out a strangled cry and cuts himself off before he can get anything out; Ben himself scrapes his chair back frantically and then freezes, staring at the blackness that has already engulfed Rey.

“W-what just happened?” Poe says shakily. “Why has she... we should go after her!”

Ben can feel a shadow of what she’s feeling through the bond – weaker, like she’s cut it off as best she can, or as much as she can bear – and he can tell going after her is not in anyone’s best interest.

He shakes his head. “She’s... processing. Or something, I think, I’m not sure either,” he admits, raking a hand through his waves and sitting back down on his chair heavily. “I think she’s realised what I realised.”

“And what have you realised?” Hux asks, his throat dry, his voice hoarse. “Please share, because I don’t think we quite understand.”

Ben looks across at Hux and meets his eyes reluctantly. “I think... I think this book means that Palpatine has... constructed a _reverse_ version of what me and Rey share. We can share our energy between us, you already know this.” Everyone has seen it in practise as they crossed the river, but Ben doubts they properly understand it. “But Palpatine can _take_ energy using the same principle. If something can be shared willingly, it stands that it can also be stolen.”

“That massive castle, the fact that he never leaves the city,” Finn continues, breathing raggedly.

“Precisely,” Ben whispers, “A metropolis like Niima City? He could take and take and take, and no one would even notice. He’s functionally immortal – at the expense of everyone nearby.”

Rose has been steadfastly staring at the gap in the shelves that Rey vanished into but she finally looks away, eyes full of tears. “And Rey was underneath him for years,” she chokes out. “She was there for years, and... we already know Palpatine was using your bond against you. He must’ve known, he must’ve been... siphoning off of her.”

Ben rubs his face _hard_ , pressing against his eyelids until his vision bursts with colour and hunching over in his chair. “That’s what she’s figured out. Her energy helped keep him alive.”

“We have to find her,” Hux says firmly, standing up, “She can only be outside, or still in here.”

“No,” Ben shakes his head, “No, I can feel her, she’s... alright, considering. She’s climbing up, she’ll want fresh air. Give her space, I’ll... I’ll know when to find her.”

Despite his words, he sends what love he can through the thin ribbon of magic connecting them before rescinding and giving her the silence she needs to think. Everyone is silent for a long minute, collecting their thoughts and trying to process what’s just happened.

“Is she, you know, okay?” Poe asks suddenly, eyes darting to their faces in turn. “I don’t mean right now specifically, just in general. I don’t think I’ve really thought about it.”

“I highly doubt it,” Rose retorts, clenching her fists and tucking them under the table so Poe can’t see. “You saw her at the river! And this too?”

“Woah, woah, let’s not snap,” Finn tries, shaking his head desperately. “Come on, guys, this is a lot but we need to figure it out. Ben, as her husband and, you know, having magical insight into her thoughts, how is she doing?”

Ben can feel his heart slowly shredding in his chest. Because he honestly can’t say he knows how Rey is doing. He doesn’t think Rey knows how Rey is doing either. She’s been so focussed, so determined – to get to Jakku, to kill Palpatine for what he’s done to both of them – that he doesn’t think they’ve stopped to actually talk about what that means or about what that might bring up for both of them. Despite existing in each other’s heads constantly, they’ve not _once_ discussed this.

“If I knew,” he confesses, “I’d tell you. I think... she’s working out how she is right now, actually. But it’s not feeling good.”

“This is my fault,” Finn sighs, “She asked me earlier about _my_ feelings and I told her about home, about Jakku. I think it’s triggered stuff, you know?”

Poe curses softly under his breath and leans back in his chair. “It’s not your fault, Finn, I don’t think anything we’ve been doing has helped.”

“I hate to say it, but it isn’t all on us,” Hux says tightly, fully expecting to be reprimanded, “She’s an adult, she can talk to us too. But we need to be careful. We’ve all seen how magic can go haywire when someone’s emotions aren’t in check.”

Ben feels faint at the thought of Rey going the way he did. “Oh shit.”

“Oh shit indeed,” Hux mutters, leaning his elbows on the table and pressing his lips together into a thin, white line. “So what do we do?”

* * *

Rey can still feel the confusion and hurt below her but she’s removed from it, distant, apart.

She hauls herself out of the hole and onto the rocks, realising with a start that it’s dawn. Time passes weirdly in the Archive. She thinks that would be true even if it wasn’t shut off from the world, but with no light to guide them, their body clocks have been weird and they’ve struggled to keep track of how long they have left.

She thought it was much earlier and she’d have the stars for company while she sorted through her thoughts; she still has them, and the moon too, hanging low in the sky and bathing the tops of the trees in a milky light, but it’s fading fast, the sky behind her and the Archive glowing golden with the arrival of the sun.

The clouds are peach-tinted and fluffy, heralding a beautiful day as they drift through the awakening sky.

Rey forces herself to take a deep breath. It does nothing.

She sits herself down on the flattest rocks, crosses her legs and plants the palms of her hand firmly on the cool stone. She realises with a start that she’s crying.

It’s little gasping sobs to begin with, her tears bitter and salty down her cheeks, trickling around her mouth and dripping slowly from her chin, but it quickly escalates, her lungs unable to pull in enough oxygen as the familiar tightness across her chest tugs harder and harder, rooting her to the spot as her vision blurs until the sky is one sun streaked blur in front of her.

She’s been so horribly used, so manipulated, even more than she’d thought before. The old scars have been ripped open with the new information, driving the knife even deeper between her ribs. Palpatine didn’t just take her from her parents, didn’t just keep her from Ben, didn’t just torture her – he leeched from her for years and years, using the water and dark magic to keep her down, keep her weak. The endless days of darkness and frozen water and exhaustion come creeping back, hollowing out her bones and stoking the emptiness she still feels sometimes when Ben isn’t around.

She helped keep Palpatine alive. She helped maintain his power. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t know – her energy and life force, sustained him while he invaded Rose’s home, while he threw her people into jail and starved them, while Finn was trained and forced to work.

She wishes she was angry. She wishes she was anything other than what she is right now. Logically, she knows the anger will come later but she’s scared she’s used up all her anger already.

“I thought I knew what had happened to me,” she weeps, talking to the birds and the far off river, the stirring lava miles below her. “I thought I’d reached the end of his cruelty and all I had to do was kill him and be free. _I thought I was done_.”

Last week, all she had left to do was kill Palpatine. Snoke was dead, Ben was hers, and once the Emperor was gone she could leave it all far behind and do whatever she wanted and ust live.

Now she has too much to think about. Finn, Ben, herself. The fate of Hays, of Jakku, of everyone Palpatine has ever taken from. Destroying him, fixing her country, rehabilitation, her own guilt and grief and never-ending pain. She presses her hands over her ears like that will somehow block out her mind and the swirling thoughts.

“I want to go home,” Rey sobs, pulling her knees up to her chest and curling into a ball. But home doesn’t really exist, so she cries for that too.

“I want – I... I want my _parents_ ,” she whispers into the fabric of her leggings, hugging herself tightly and rocking. “I want my parents, I want my mum.”

As her cries grow louder, startling the birds nesting in the trees up on the ridge, she realises through the haze of her mind that this is the first time she’s ever said that out loud. That she misses them, that something was _taken_ from her. It doesn’t matter if they gave her up or not, she’s still allowed to miss them.

At that realisation, she can suddenly breathe again. She’s still crying, her nose blocked and her throat hoarse, but it’s a relief, almost, a way to let it all out.

“I wish they were here,” she chokes out, “Even if they were awful. Even if they had a choice and let me go.”

Rey wipes her nose on her sleeve and tentatively stretches her shoulders out, rolling them in their sockets and listening to her back crack. She feels like shit. She feels _worse_ but simultaneously a whole lot better.

And, she adds to herself. She did it without Ben. She did it by herself – and _for_ herself.

She places her hands back on the rocks underneath her and realises she can tell which ones came from the magma below from the way they make her pulse skip in her veins. Filling her lungs with the fresh morning air, she tips her head back and simply allows herself to feel overwhelmed.

Time passes. No one comes after her. She can feel Ben’s concern and it warms her even though she has no desire to speak to him just yet. Once she’s figured out how she feels, she’ll head back down. But for now she sits on the rocks and empties her head, feeling the sun rise behind her and outline her body in white light. Sure, she’s not _okay_ , but she’s alive and she’s sat on top of the world, her magic fizzing in her blood and the heat of the sun soaking into her skin. That’s enough for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a hot minute but I am tentatively back. Uni has really screw me over this semester, especially with online learning etc, but I miss writing and I'm going to carve out time for it again! Updates will still be extremely intermittent, but I haven't given up on the story and it will get finished!! Enjoy x


	9. One More Troubled Soul

“So we have to get Palpatine alone?” Poe double checks, rubbing his temples.

They’ve moved on from Rey and are trying to think practically about what their hard-won information means for the war. It’s giving them all a headache – the logistics alone are intimidating enough.

“Yeah. We don’t know the radius of what he can do, but we have to assume he was able to reach Rey in the dungeons,” Ben says tiredly, thanking Rose who brings him a tea before she plops into the chair Rey has vacated.

“And they’re, what, a mile beneath the throne room?” Hux checks, looking to Finn and Poe, the only two who would really know.

“Give or take,” Finn agrees, “If he really was using her like that, we have to assume a mile. At the very least. Which, if we look at it in three dimensions, means the whole of the castle, and probably the start of the city too.”

“Fucking hell,” Poe mutters.

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Rose adds. “And how do we get Palpatine alone if we have a whole castle around him?”

“We can’t just siege it,” Hux realises, shaking his head slowly and rubbing his jaw.

“Of course we can’t,” Rose breathes, her eyes dulling as she stares through them all. “He’ll take the energy of every single person in that building one by one until it’s just him left. We can’t starve him into submission, we can’t wait it out. We have to attack or he kills them all slowly.”

Ben swore and scraped his chair back, pacing the small area angrily. “My parents – we’ll have to get there as fast as we can, or send a bird ahead if we can. Is that even possible? Otherwise we’ll be changing their plan with little to no time.”

“If there are any birds that could fly to Jakku, it’s still a long distance. It wouldn’t give them much more warning anyway,” Poe croaks.

They all fall silent, Hux already scribbling on some parchment, arrows around the crude map of Niima City and the palace at the centre. Rose grips her mug so tightly it looks like it might break. You could cut the tension with a knife.

“Me and Rey will have to face him alone,” Ben announces, pausing with his back to the others as he stares into the maze of bookshelves, the air heavy with dust and the weight of history.

He can feel Rey reaching the same conclusion at the other end of their connection, her breathing spiking again. He wants to hold her. He wants to give her space. He wants to _scream_.

His friends clamour their protest immediately, Poe’s hand already on the pommel of his sword, his eyes angry. Hux kicks the table leg and Rose is shaking her head profusely. But it’s no good.

“ _Think about it_ ,” Ben snaps, whirling on the spot, his magic crackling at his fingertips, the floor beneath his feet frosting over. He’s not lost control like this since before Rey and he sees the look in their eyes as they notice. They’ve not been scared of him – truly scared – in months but he can’t find it in himself to regret it.

“Think about it,” he repeats, voice calmer as he clenches his fists, nails digging into his skin. “If anyone is with us, he could take from you too. Anyone who comes with us is only more energy for him to use. You’re all going to have to stay well away – he might be able to use _our_ energy too, and if he can do that then we stand no chance at all and the further you are from him the better.”

“There has to be a better way. You... you shouldn’t have to do this alone,” Rose cries, her voice wobbling as she stands half way between Ben and the others. “That was never the plan, Ben.”

“No, but that was before,” he says, eyes wide and pleading. “If you come with us and he kills you? What then? The Rebellion loses more people than necessary, me and Rey are screwed – you think either of us could fight after that? – and it’s all for nothing.”

“He’s right, Rose,” Finn mutters, approaching her and tentatively resting his hand on her shoulder. “I hate it too, but he’s right.”

Rose’s voice cracks as she tries to reply and she turns to bury her face against Finn’s chest, shoulders heaving. Poe sits back down heavily, looking older than Ben remembers.

“We knew the information would help us, we should’ve known it’d come at a cost.” Ben’s voice is low and smooth. “That’s how magic works. It always has been. There’s always a price.”

“We need to bring Rey back,” Hux points out, cheekbones sharp in the glowing lights Rey has kept burning since they arrived. “She needs to be here for this.”

Ben can feel that Rey is not in a good way, but there’s truth to Hux’s words too; she’s part of this, more than any of them at this point. They’re planning to attack on the Solstice to give them both – but mostly her – as much advantage as they can. This has been personal from the beginning for all of them for so many reasons, but for her, this is everything.

“I can go, if you want?” Hux offers, getting the feeling that Ben doesn’t want to be the one to disturb whatever Rey is doing.

“It should be me,” Ben argues quietly.

“No, it shouldn’t,” Hux replies, just as softly. “We’re a team. It doesn’t need to be the two of you against the world. Don’t only rely on each other, Ben.”

Ben looks away, taking a deep breath and surveying the room. Finn holds one of Poe’s hands and one of Rose’s, Hux hovers behind them, his hand on the back of Rose’s chair. Ben’s mind skips over memories: Rose and Hux asleep together, Finn running his hand through Poe’s unruly mop of hair, Poe picking Rey up and spinning her around, Rose and Rey curled up together in their tent every night, Hux by his side since before Snoke. There’s more magic in the world than just the dyad, he realises.

Rey and he might have to face Palpatine alone, but they aren’t facing him yet. They can rely on their friends for now.

“Yeah,” he says finally, swallowing hard. “Yeah, sure. Thank you, Hux.”

Hux smiles and peels himself away from the others silently. He glances over his shoulder at Rose before he vanishes into the darkness, picking his way back through to the ropes up to the surface.

* * *

Rey senses him before he makes it to the top. Hux is severely overheated as he hauls himself up onto the rocks next to her but even before, she could feel his body temperature from the bottom of the cavern.

She watches him with red rimmed eyes as he sits up and catches his breath, their eye contact intense enough that she wants to look away but doesn’t dare for some reason.

“You need to come back,” Hux says finally, the words she already knew were coming.

“I don’t want to,” she replies evenly, hunching her shoulders over as she watches the river, getting lost in the swirling water and crashing rapids.

“Tough,” Hux says, scrambling to sit next to her and following her gaze down. “We’ve been talking.”

“About me?”

“Kind of. About you, and Ben, and how we face Palpatine now we know this stuff.”

“We have to do it alone, don’t we?” Rey whispers.

“Yes, you do,” Hux confirms. “I’m sorry.”

He remembers the way she’d been in the gardens of Aldera, her dress floating, her smile bright. She looks nothing like that now and he wishes he could tell her that all the evil was defeated and her and Ben were free, but he can’t.

“I’m tired, Hux,” she admits, turning her head to look at him, her tawny hair spilling across her knees and down her legs. “I don’t even have words for how I feel. There’s too much going on.”

Hux chuckles and the anger in Rey’s eyes makes him laugh harder. “No, don’t be angry, I’m not laughing at you! I just... you’re so like Ben sometimes, I remember all over again that you’re... the same soul or whatever. I tell him this regularly – you don’t have to have it all figured out, you know that right?”

Rey blinks. “But... _you_ do.”

“Incorrect,” Hux smiles, “I absolutely do not have it all figured out. I just allow myself to not have it all figured out and that helps immensely. Granted, I think your stuff is a bit more complicated than mine but it’s okay to be confused.”

She freezes, like the thought has never occurred to her. “I’ve never...”

“I know,” Hux chuckles again, turning back to look at the canyon, leaning back on his arms and squinting against the sun even though it’s behind them still.

Rey is silent, thinking.

“That’s half of why I came up,” Hux continues. “The other half was that I wanted to say I’m worried about you.”

“Good morning to you too,” she grumbles, her brow furrowed, but she sounds more like herself so he doesn’t mind.

“Listen, Ben would never come out and say it, he’d beat around the bush but I don’t do that,” he shrugs. “You’re going through a bunch of stuff right now, trying to exact revenge on the man who ruined your life, the fate of countries on your shoulders, yadda yadda, the Solstice is... approaching more rapidly than we’d like, you’ve seen how Ben got at Winter Solstice. Just because you guys are connected now, doesn’t mean I don’t have my concerns. There’s going to be so much energy flowing through you and I think we both know your mental state isn’t the best.”

Rey looks down at her hands. She can’t help but agree with him, even if she’s loathed to.

“I don’t want you getting carried away in all of this and losing it, especially when most of this does depend on the pair of you, whether you want it to or not.”

She worries her lip and turns to look at him. “Have you told him this?”

“No, not yet. He’s not your keeper, even if he’s your husband. I’m telling you first, but if I think you need more help, I’ll tell him,” he says honestly. “And, this might seem contradictory seeing as I just told him off for assuming it’s you two versus everyone, but trust in him. He needed you to balance him, remember? If you need him too, that’s okay.”

Hux thinks he sees tears in her eyes but sensibly says nothing, letting her wipe them away with her sleeve. “Anyway. That’s all I have to say. You should probably come back down now. We’ve got lots more to figure out.”

Rey nods but makes no effort to move. “Five more minutes, is that okay?” she whispers.

Hux stands and brushes his trousers down carefully, nodding. “Sure. I’ll let the others know. But it had better be five, or I’ll send Rose up here after you instead of good old me.”

That earns him a little smile and Hux tucks it away carefully, smiling back.

“See you in five, Rey.”

* * *

When Rey rejoins them, she’s quiet but put together, her eyes dry and her mouth firmly pressed shut. She’s sure Ben can still feel her confusion but Hux’s words really did help – she doesn’t need to be okay, she can work this all out one step at a time, at her own pace.

Rose and Finn wrap their arms around her tightly and Poe pokes her waist until a laugh bubbles out of her and her chest feels lighter than it has in a while. Ben kisses the top of her head lovingly and makes room for her around the table where they’ve been busy writing out the information they need, theorising, and composing a letter to send to Leia and Han should they get the chance.

They let her stay quiet, tucked against Ben and gradually syncing her heartbeat with his. The flames lighting the room gutter and flicker when she shifts. Ben makes eye contact with Hux across the table as he picks up on the tangled shape of her thoughts. She knows they’re talking silently in the way they’ve been able to do for a while now, and she strongly suspects they’re talking about her. They don’t think she’s okay, and they’d be right. She’s a mess right now, and while she’s worried about how she’s going to deal with everything that’s about to happen, she’s going to try to be okay with being a mess.


End file.
